A World to Win

by Mary Lancaster

  The next morning, I was brought a letter from Aunt Edith with my morning coffee. I tried to read it, but in truth I couldn’t concentrate on her scolding — her letters are always at least half-scold, even when I am positively angelic — for despite the rising feeling in me that life in Hungary was proving too much for me to cope with, a feeling that almost amounted to homesickness, I could think of nothing but last night’s dance, of no one but Lajos.

  With the vague idea of reading it later, when I was more settled, I carried the letter with me to the schoolroom, where Miklós asked me to admire a huge spider which he had trapped in a box. It was certainly an ugly monster, but I barely glanced at it, saying merely, “Most ill-favoured,” as I laid down my books. He was obviously disappointed by this tame reaction, for he then released the insect, which scuttled in circles round the floor for at least five minutes, to the joyous squeals of the Enemy, before disappearing into some crack in the wall. After which, I had to exert all my fading energy to get the children settled down again and put to work on their daily arithmetic exercise.

  While they toiled, I sat down at my desk and tried again to read Aunt Edith’s letter. I haven’t mentioned before her attitude to my working for the Szelényis, but naturally it was disapproving. She was appalled, first of all, that my pride permitted me to undertake any occupation in their household, and, secondly, that I was deceiving them as to my identity, a crime which she considered almost as despicable as theirs.

  By the time of this most recent letter, she was becoming definitely agitated about the length of time I was prepared to keep up the masquerade. “I cannot bear the thought,” she wrote, “of Count Szelényi discovering such deceit in a Kettles. Your behaviour in this is entirely repugnant to me. I am now convinced that by far your best course is to give notice to Count István and come home at once without revealing to anyone that you are Sofia’s daughter. If only the money you have can take you as far as Vienna, your uncle will arrange for more to reach you there. Truly, it has gone on too long, when it is something which should never have begun...”

  I sighed and let the letter drop from my fingers. More lowering than anything else was the fact that Aunt Edith was right, and in the light of that I considered her most recent advice. I thought of my likely life, somewhere in Scotland, or maybe England, teaching children who were not Miklós or Anna, far away from anyone who had ever heard of Lajos Lázár. I would never even know if he were free or in prison...

  Yet what was my alternative? To seek another post in Hungary? The Szelényis would hardly give me a reference if they knew who I was — and if I kept my identity to myself as Aunt Edith now suggested, well, I couldn’t bear to do that. No, I was going to have to confess; and after that, I would just have to learn to live without any communication, without any news of Lajos. Perhaps it would even be easier than seeing him...

  Here, misery threatened to overwhelm me, so it was as well that Miklós announced he was finished. I went to mark his work, and it was while I was doing so that István came in, as he occasionally did to review his children’s progress. I straightened at once, but he said, “No, no, carry on. There is no hurry.”

  So I left him to wander while I corrected Miklós’s arithmetic and then Anna’s. And only as I was explaining an error to her did I suddenly become aware of my own mistake. For István was standing idly by my desk, and Aunt Edith’s letter was lying there.

  For a moment, I felt frozen. Surely István would not lower himself to read a letter addressed to someone else? No, but what if his own name, so liberally scattered across the sheets, just caught his eye? He would have to be inhuman not to let himself read on. Surreptitiously, I glanced at the desk, praying that the letter was folded, but of course it wasn’t. It lay where I had dropped it, spread out at the page which even mentioned my mother’s name. And István was looking at it.

  What a silly way to be discovered, I thought, almost irritated and wishing violently that I had screwed up my courage earlier. But I knew now why I hadn’t: that too had been all mixed up with Lajos.

  I was holding my breath. Slowly, he lifted his eyes and met mine over Anna’s head. It was plain to see at once that he knew. It’s over, I thought stupidly. It’s over.

  Part Two: Revolution: November 1847 — March 1848

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  On a cool November day, I found myself again on the Danube steam-ship, going back the way I had come only six months ago. The wonder of the river scenery had not changed since then — except in its glorious autumn colours — but I rather thought I had.

  I stood alone by the ship’s rail, letting the wind blow the ribbons of my bonnet across my cheek, poignantly remembering that other journey in the spring when I had struggled to control Miklós and Anna and secretly conversed for the first time with Lajos Lázár. Today there were no children dangling from my skirts, and I knew for a fact that Lajos was not on board — he was already in Pressburg, waiting for the opening of the Diet. He would be in his element: agitating, inciting, heckling, no doubt holding illegal street meetings to stir up support for the Opposition.

  I smiled to myself. So much was hoped for from this Diet that I didn’t see how it could ever live up to expectations, not just Lajos’s, but everyone’s — Zarescu’s, Father Ránoczy, Count Batthyány’s, Kossuth’s, the Szelényis’...

  Of course, between them, the Szelényis represented the whole range of public opinion, from the reactionary old Count to the mildly radical Mattias — with István somewhere in the moderate middle. Well, for all his arrogance and temper, István was a moderate man, as I had cause to know. He hadn’t even been angry with me when he had read Aunt Edith’s letter, or at least not after the first shock. He had been more — suspicious.

  Katalin’s reaction had been harder to bear. Tripping gaily into the schoolroom in the midst of our confrontation, she had been brought up short by our serious faces.

  “What is it?” she had asked in alarm, and István had answered harshly, “Don’t you know? Let me introduce you to your niece.”

  “My niece? Stop being ridiculous!”

  “Sofia’s daughter. I wondered if you were in on the secret, since you spend so much time here — and since you seem to imagine you have something in common with Sofia.”

  Katalin was looking bewildered. “What is he saying?” she asked me, a trace of impatience visible through her puzzlement. I forced myself to meet her gaze.

  “He’s saying that I am Sofia’s daughter.”

  “But you can’t be!” She looked from me to István and back again, then sank slowly into the chair by the desk.

  “You stay with her,” said István abruptly. “I’m going to speak to Father.” And he moved away, peremptorily gathering the children as he went, as if I could now contaminate them by my mere presence. Katalin was still staring at me.

  “I don’t understand,” she said, just as István had. “Why have you never said? Why are you the governess, for God’s sake?”

  I looked at her. “Can’t you work it out? Sofia is dead. I took the opportunity of this post to satisfy my curiosity, to seek a little revenge!” Her eyes widened. She took it in slowly, and the understanding in her eyes was almost unbearable.

  “I see,” she said. “I see. So that is why you agreed to help Alex and me. You hoped to cause trouble through us.”

  “At first,” I said, looking down at the desk. “Partly.”

  “Well, congratulations,” she said bitterly. “You succeeded!”

  “No,” I protested, stung by the injustice of that. “Katalin, I never wished you any harm...”

  “Didn’t you?” She looked at me, hurt standing out in her beautiful eyes, like a puppy who has been kicked for no good reason. “I trusted you. I thought you were my friend.”

  “I was,” I said, low. “I am.”

  “No,” she said simply, and I turned away to hide my own feelings.

  I had always known she would be hurt by this revelation, but if I had imagined I would
not, I had been fooling myself. Wayward and selfish as I knew her to be, she was also warm and kind and my closest companion over the last few months. I would have been terribly lonely without her. But I could not tell her all this, then. She wouldn’t have believed me, and that too was my fault.

  Unhappily, I watched her stand up and leave. After a moment, I went too, going back to my bedchamber and drearily laying out my few possessions. However, I hadn’t got very far before a servant appeared to inform me that the Count had summoned me to the library. I went at once, trying to tell myself that this was the confrontation I had sought since May; but things were no longer the same, no longer so black and white. I understood the old man a little now, his courage and his pain as well as his absolute stubbornness. And my own behaviour was hardly above reproach. Besides all of which, I remembered miserably that I hated confrontation...

  Only days ago I had received his thanks in this room. He was alone, his back to the great, stone fireplace. I closed the door and advanced a few steps, then paused and waited. For several seconds he examined me in silence.

  “So,” he said eventually, his lip curling unpleasantly. “You are John Kettles’s daughter, and quite as deceitful as he ever was!”

  “My father never deceived anyone,” I said at once.

  “No? He deceived me into believing him to be a man of principle! But I don’t wish to discuss him. It’s you who interest me now. My son tells me you don’t want money.”

  “No,” I said shortly, lifting my chin.

  “Good. Because I’m not prepared to give you any. What do you want?”

  I looked at him, allowing all his contempt to wash over me. It was true that I was not blameless, but how dared this fierce old man accuse me of extortion or whatever it was he imagined I was here for?

  “From you?” I said softly. “I want nothing. Not even an apology, for neither my mother nor my father is here to receive it.”

  The old man’s brows flew together. “They’d get no apology from me!” he barked. “I did not wrong John Kettles! He wronged me!”

  “A little, perhaps,” I allowed. I found triumphantly that I was quite unafraid of him. He could not hurt me. “But you wronged them twice, first by denying them the right to marry, and then by refusing to recognize them when they did marry!”

  “Don’t you preach to me, girl!” he growled, and now my anger really flared.

  “Why not? It’s time someone did! You’re a brutal, selfish, heartless old man, totally lacking in any generosity of spirit or human affection...!”

  He took a hasty step towards me, his face growing livid with anger. “What do you know of affection, you silly little girl?” he ground out. “Or generosity, you who took a position and money from my son under false pretences!”

  “I earned every penny of my salary,” I returned at once. “And at least I was acting out of love for my parents, which is more than you ever did!”

  “I owed them no love! Your mother disobeyed me and chose to leave!”

  I stared at him. “So you cut your love off, just like that? Unspeakably shallow...!”

  “You know nothing!”

  “I know you were immune to the last pleas of your dying daughter!” I flashed, and abruptly he turned his back on me. But I could not leave it there: this anger had been building up for too long. “Could you not have forgiven her even then, on her deathbed? What sort of monster are you?”

  “No,” he said in a half-strangled voice, so quietly that I had to take a step forward to hear him. “I couldn’t forgive her, even then.”

  In the face of such obvious pain, I felt my anger begin to drain away. Baffled, almost frustrated, I gazed at his rigid back.

  “Why not?” I said helplessly. “For God’s sake, why not?”

  “She didn’t ask,” he murmured, so softly now that I was straining to catch the word. He half-turned towards me again. “She never admitted she had done wrong, so she never needed my forgiveness.”

  “So,” I said slowly. “All it would have taken was for her to admit she was wrong in marrying my father?”

  He met my gaze again. The ferocity had gone from his eyes, but so had the pain. “I can’t change, any more than she could.” And before I had the chance to dispute, he continued, “So, now you have said your piece. You have said what I presume you came all the way from Scotland to say. What do you want to do now?”

  A little disoriented by this change of tactic, I took a few moments to answer.

  “I’ll go to the village for tonight,” I said at last, “and in the morning I’ll leave for Buda-Pest — and home, I suppose.”

  “It’s a long way to travel alone in a foreign land,” he remarked, almost idly.

  “I shan’t be alone,” I lied at once. “I shall travel with Captain Zarescu and Lajos Lázár.”

  I waited calmly for his explosion of anger, rejoicing in my immunity to it; but frustratingly I saw an unexpected gleam of amusement in his hard eyes.

  “You are trying to rile me,” he observed. He looked at me, tugging his lower lip in a characteristic gesture of indecision. His expression was unreadable. Then, “Don’t go until we speak again,” he said abruptly. “I want to talk to my family, and I would rather you stayed at least until I have done so.”

  “Why?” I asked suspiciously.

  “Do you question everything?” he responded, pulling the bell rope beside him. “I presume you have no objection to Margit’s company? She at least will have none to yours.”

  Poor Margit. She slid into the library, a little at a time. At first, only her fingers appeared around the door, then her nose, and finally her whole head peeped round, looking expectantly, I think, for the bodies.

  “Hurry up and come in!” the Count snapped impatiently. “I presume I don’t need to introduce you to your niece.”

  “Oh dear,” said Margit vaguely, purposelessly. “Oh dear...”

  “You’ll be happy to look after her while I talk to the others, won’t you?” he added, his voice a little unkind again. “You pined enough when your sister left; take her child with you for an hour.”

  “You need take me nowhere,” I said to Margit, casting an angry glance at her father. “The Count is...”

  “Oh dear, tush tush,” Margit interrupted, seizing my hand and squeezing it compulsively. “Come with me, now...” And somehow I was silenced and bundled out of the room.

  She chattered about nothing all the way upstairs to what seemed to be her private sitting room, a surprisingly ordered, tidy chamber, full of books and pleasant, modern furniture. I looked at Margit with new eyes, and found her gaze devouring me.

  “You knew,” I blurted. “ You always knew.”

  She nodded several times, like a bird. “Well, I knew your name, you see, and you are like her, a little, in expression perhaps more than feature...”

  “Why didn’t you say?”

  “You had your reasons to keep silent,” she said simply. “I could only wait for you to tell me.”

  She stopped, staring silently at me until I said, “My mother missed you. Very much.” And then a huge tear squeezed out of her watery eye and rolled down her faded cheek. “Oh, Margit,” I said, and went to her. She fell into my arms, her frail, bird-like hands clutching me to her.

  For the first time that day, I had felt my own tears close to the surface, and was obliged to fight them back.

  * * * *

  In the end it had been nearly two hours before we were summoned back to the library, and by then I had felt quite unequal to the family’s joint disapprobation, their contempt. I wasn’t even sure why I was making myself go through with it, except perhaps that I owed it to them.

  Margit had all but pushed me into the room in front of her, much as I have seen bitches nudge their pups, and once there I forced myself to look calmly around the company. As before, the Count was standing with his back to the fireplace, his expression unreadable. On the sofa to his left sat Maria and Baron Mirányi, the former tight-lipped
and obviously displeased. István, in a chair by himself, was looking at me thoughtfully with his cool, grey gaze.

  Elisabeth and Katalin were seated on the other sofa. Elisabeth’s eyes were, if anything, amused, but Katalin had turned her head away as if she didn’t want to see me. I didn’t really blame her. Mattias was leaning over the back of the sofa, between them. His handsome, young face expressed curiosity as he regarded me, but no hatred. I supposed we had had too little contact for him to feel anything very much about me.

  “Come and sit down,” said the Count, not unkindly.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I prefer to stand.” I resisted Margit’s pressure, letting her sit while I stood beside her and waited to find out why I had been brought to face this tribunal.

  “We have been talking,” the Count began, more blandly than was his wont, “and the children have convinced me that I do owe you something. You have already said that you don’t want money from me, but nevertheless, I propose that I make you a reasonable allowance — I’m sure we could agree on a sum?”

  Unreasonably, unspecifically disappointed, I gazed at him, and didn’t prevent my lip from curling.

  “I doubt it,” I said contemptuously. “If you have nothing further to say, I’ll bid you all good-bye.”

  Mortified, I turned on my heel, but Margit’s fingers closed with surprising strength on my wrist, and behind me, I heard the Count say triumphantly, “I told you she wouldn’t take it!”

  Slowly, I turned back to face him, met his fierce yet pleased eyes. “You were testing me?”

  “No,” Maria said. “I was. I doubt your motives, if not your identity — who can blame me in the face of what we do know about you?”

  “No one, I’m sure. My motives were strictly uncharitable — in fact totally reprehensible. For what it is worth to any of you, I’m sorry. I misjudged many things.”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Katalin turn her head at last and look at me. Deliberately, I met her gaze.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated. And since I had to get the apologies off my chest, I shifted my gaze to Elisabeth, saying jerkily, “I did teach the children to the best of my ability. I apologise for the lies. They seemed at the time to be necessary.”