A World to Win

by Mary Lancaster

  I gave up.

  By the time Lajos returned to Pest, winter had closed in. The Danube had frozen over, the hills above Buda had turned white, and Pest sparkled with bright, cold frost. I loved the new beauty of the cities, especially in the early dusk — which was why I chose to walk home from an afternoon spent in Buda with some amusing new friends. And it was then, dawdling along the Pest side of the river, that I finally came face to face with Lajos.

  He was with a group of perhaps eight working men, all standing talking by the light of a lamp-post, right in my path. My heart lurched uncomfortably; my step faltered; then I forced myself to go on, drawing my guard around me like a wrap. Despite everything, despite my new life, my new feelings, I needed his friendship very badly...

  Already I could hear him saying seriously, “That’s why they keep it from us, so that we feel isolated — but we’re not. All over Europe, ordinary people are organising their discontent, and all over Europe, things are changing. The French are forcing it, with their great political banquets for the people, uniting them against their government...”

  “But where will that lead?” someone asked with a terrifying cough. “What will it do for us?”

  “For them, for us, I hope it will lead to revolution,” Lajos said frankly, and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Then, unexpectedly, he looked up and saw me; and the smile which lit his eyes was quite spontaneous. Relief flooded through me like a tide. I returned his smile with uncomplicated gladness, because we were still friends. And then I was squeezing past his companions, passing on.

  “The revolution will free all the peoples of Europe, Hungarians included...”

  Inevitably, I was fighting a sense of anti-climax. We had met at last, but just as in Pressburg, he was busy with politics. And of course, Teréz was in Buda-Pest...

  In my misery, I was hardly aware of the light, running footsteps until they came along side me. Lajos said, “I didn’t realize they still let you out alone.”

  I recovered quickly. “They consider me too eccentric to cross.”

  Risking a glance at him, I saw his lips quirk in the half-smile I had so missed, and then he said casually, “You look well.”

  Inevitably, his eyes had strayed to my new sartorial elegance. I met his gaze defiantly. “You should see my ball gown,” I said challengingly, and saw amusement glimmer in his dark eyes.

  “I should love to,” he said promptly. I regarded him with hostility.

  “Do you know, even if my family had authorized it, I wouldn’t have given the money to the poor. I wanted a new dress. Several new dresses.”

  “I wasn’t criticizing,” he said mildly. “How could I? I spend my pay on wine and books and the production of pamphlets that make policemen’s hair curl.”

  I eyed him suspiciously. “Don’t you think it’s a waste of money?”

  “The books are, perhaps, but not the wine.”

  “Lajos, I’m serious! I mean, I was sure you would disapprove of wasting money on such fripperies!”

  “Come, I’m not a Presbyterian!” He drew my hand through his arm and I let it lie there, peaceful and content. His eyes were laughing at me. “As for the poor, it’s not charity they need; it’s work, better wages, cheaper food and more respect. Here endeth the first lesson.”

  * * * *

  “Shall we go and visit Petöfi?” Lajos said.

  We were still strolling by the glassy river, companionably eating hot chestnuts which Lajos had bought from a street vendor. I had forgotten I was expected at the palace. Under that clear, darkening sky, walking so comfortably by his side, watching our breath hang in the cold air around us, I felt a fragile contentment steal over me. I found myself pretending that he loved me, that we were just such a couple as I could see hand-in-hand in front of us.

  I looked up at him. “At the Pilvax?” I asked, a little dubiously.

  “Petöfi’s a married man now,” Lajos said wryly. “He can’t fritter away all his evenings in a café. But we could go to his house.”

  I confess that the prospect of meeting the charismatic poet and his new wife in their own domain intrigued me. I glanced at Lajos. He was shivering slightly, his only protection against the icy winds blowing in off the Great Plain being an old and inevitably shabby top-coat. Ruthlessly quashing my anxiety for him, I said only, “Would Madame Petöfi not mind?”

  “No; she is remarkably tolerant of all his friends, however disreputable.”

  “Even you?” I mocked.

  His lips curved a little ruefully. “Well, she puts up with me for Petöfi’s sake, but to be honest, I don’t think she cares for me a great deal.”

  I was surprised by that. I thought of several witty responses, but in the end I simply asked, “Why not?”

  “I suspect Petöfi told her that I tried to dissuade him from marrying her.”

  I blinked. “Why did you do that? You’d never even met her!”

  Lajos shrugged. “I know. It just seemed wrong for him — shouting about liberty with every second breath — to leg-shackle himself for life to some female he scarcely knew. But the feeling went deeper with him than I guessed.”

  “But she hasn’t forgiven you?”

  “Not yet,” said Lajos, “I’m working on it.”

  We walked on while I ate the last chestnut without compunction. After a little, unable to resist, I asked lightly, “Have you never had the urge to be — er — leg-shackled, yourself?”

  “I don’t believe I’m a marrying man,” he answered in the same vein. I knew I should hold my tongue, but I couldn’t.

  “Wouldn’t you like to marry — Teréz, for example? If it were possible.”

  At that, he turned his direct gaze upon me. I met it innocently enough, veiling my true interest in his answer. There was a definite pause before he said briefly, “No.”

  I had time to feel a quick upsurge of gladness before, unexpectedly, his hand came up, gently pushing an escaped lock of my hair back under my hood, and that lightest caress of his finger tips on my cheek made me catch my breath. I brushed his hand away with a quick laugh that sounded nervous to my own ears.

  I couldn’t bear his touch. I felt all my self-control dissolve, leaving me as vulnerable as if I were naked. I gazed blindly across the glittering river to Buda’s magnificent skyline, keeping my face averted from his penetrating eyes in case they read the abject longing in mine.

  I was relieved, even glad, when we came to Petöfi’s abode, which he shared with his fellow radical, the writer Mór Jókai. Jókai was not at home, but Petöfi and his wife made us very welcome; and if Madame Petöfi’s manner was a little reserved, particularly towards Lajos, she betrayed no trace of discomfort or dislike, fetching food and wine and treating us to the friendliest hospitality.

  While Lajos and Petöfi lapsed into the half-political, half-bantering conversation peculiar to them when they were together, Madame Petöfi and I began the preliminary civilities of two rather reticent women meeting for the first time but prepared to like each other.

  Once I glanced at the men and found Petöfi’s eyes on me with undisguised speculation. For the first time I wondered how he and his wife regarded this visit of mine in Lajos’s company, and I flushed, both with irritation at not having considered this before — Lajos’s casual manners were too lulling — and with sheer embarrassment.

  Petöfi smiled at me. “My friend tells me you are not a governess after all, but an aristo of the first order!”

  “Sándor!” Julia protested.

  “Only on my mother’s side,” I said meekly. “And I am not yet so used to living in a palace that I should object very strongly to being turfed out of it — come your revolution.”

  Petöfi laughed. “That’s the spirit! Would you like to see my engravings?”

  Since these were rather good portraits of the French revolutionaries of 1789, including Robespierre and St. Just, I said promptly, “I saw them when I came in. Very proper for a man of your principles.”

>   Lajos smiled. “You won’t get the better of her, Petöfi.”

  “I shan’t try any more. I still like Miss Katie!”

  “Look gratified,” Lajos recommended. “It’s meant to be an honour.” Petöfi threw a newspaper at him.

  * * * *

  The Szelényi new year ball was the biggest social event of the winter, but it stands out in my mind for quite another reason, namely my discovery that I had a most distinguished admirer. Colonel von Avenheim came all the way from Transylvania in appallingly treacherous weather conditions, apparently just to be at the ball; and once there he chose to dance only with me.

  After our second waltz, tired but exhilarated, I accepted his escort to a seat — which turned out to be situated in a curtained alcove.

  “Your warnings were quite unnecessary, Miss Katie,” he said, smiling, letting the curtain fall back behind him and sitting on the sofa beside me. “For you dance delightfully.”

  I regarded him with scepticism, but returned the compliment sincerely. “Why, so do you, Colonel. Believe me, it was only your skill which kept me off your toes!”

  He laughed, and to my surprise I thought I detected a new, deeper warmth in his normally cool blue eyes.

  “Then I may hope for another dance this evening?”

  I looked at him quizzically. “I shall be accused of monopolizing you,” I said at last, lightly.

  “I should like very much,” he said softly, “to be monopolized by you...”

  Unexpectedly, he bent his head towards mine as if he meant to kiss me; involuntarily, I turned my face away and stood up, but it wasn’t primness or repulsion which compelled me — how could one be repelled by a gentleman as attractive as the Colonel? It was simply that there was only one man whose kisses I wanted, and he was not here.

  “I think,” I said firmly, “I would like some more champagne.” He rose also, and took my hands, smiling down at me.

  “Forgive me,” he said simply, lifting my fingers to his lips.

  “Perhaps,” I said lightly, “but I insist on the champagne.” And I drew my hands out of his hold. He raised the curtain for me to pass through, and I found I was consumed with a nervous desire to laugh.

  Katalin was, as usual, enjoying herself with her multitude of admirers, despite Captain Zarescu’s absence, but she still found time to twit me about the Colonel’s attentions.

  “I saw you disappearing into the alcove with him,” she said teasingly, taking my arm and urging me to walk with her. It was, in fact, the custom for ladies to go about in pairs at such parties, a form of discreet chaperonage which we had both been avoiding until now. “But seriously, I have never seen the Colonel behave so, and we’ve known him forever. Do you like him?”

  “Of course I do,” I said coolly.

  “Oh Katie, wouldn’t it be wonderful if...”

  “Very wonderful,” I interrupted drily. “In fact, incredible.”

  All the same, it did appear that I had engaged the Colonel’s interest. He stayed in Buda-Pest only a few days, and seeing my distaste for secret dalliance at the ball, he behaved afterwards like the perfect gentleman I knew him to be. Yet he sought me out on many occasions, walked with me in the snow, played with the children, sat near me and showed me such charming attentions that I began to wish I could fall in love with him.

  * * * *

  When Katalin, Mattias and I arrived at the Pilvax that evening early in March, I was plagued by the dread that Petöfi or one of the others might betray too great an acquaintance with me by over-friendly greetings. However, I need have had no fear of that, for they never even noticed my entrance.

  We were there largely because István had just bolted to Vienna to try and reassure the Imperial Government after Kossuth’s latest incendiary speech — “The dynasty must choose between its own welfare and the preservation of a rotten system...” — and because Elisabeth, having watched him go broodingly, as if she had suspected him of taking another woman with him in her place, had suddenly revived to the extent of attending some select party at Teréz Meleki’s house.

  On sudden impulse, Katalin had used this rare opportunity to harass Mattias into taking her to the Pilvax in the hope of meeting Alex there. I was necessarily included in her project, though naturally I made a show of reluctance — not least because of the unwisdom of meeting her lover under Mattias’s nose.

  I saw them at once, at their favourite long table: Lajos and Petöfi and Vasvári and Mór Jókai and several other familiar looking young men. There was wine on the table, but the flagon was still half-full and the men themselves were in the middle of a heated debate which involved much gesticulating and scribbling on pieces of paper.

  Of course the news from France must have electrified them: just as Lajos had foretold, the French had risen in revolution, overthrowing the government and forcing the King himself to abdicate. And already the Pest radicals had turned wild with joy and anticipation, whipping up increasingly large and noisy street meetings — which caused respectable people to voice genuine alarm about the dangerous influence of such agitators as Lajos Lázár; while Petöfi himself, according to Mattias, had rushed back to Pest from holiday, in abject terror lest the Hungarian revolution start without him!

  Now, in a moment of relative quiet, their voices drifted clearly across to me. “I don’t care,” Lajos was saying flatly. “Universal suffrage is fundamental.”

  “‘Responsible government’ would cover it,” Petöfi argued. “We can interpret it later to suit ourselves.”

  Someone else spoke then, but I didn’t hear it, for in the disconcerting way he had, Lajos suddenly looked up and straight into my eyes. His fleeting half-smile dawned and then the man next to him was beating the table in front of him to gain his attention. I could almost have believed that he returned to the debate with reluctance; but then I was becoming more and more given to these fantasies.

  “He’s not here,” Katalin said tragically in my ear as we followed the waiter to a vacant table. Stupidly, I had opened my mouth to say of course he was, before I realized who it was that she meant. It was becoming very easy to betray myself. I squeezed her hand.

  “Perhaps he’ll come later,” I breathed. “Did you expect him?”

  She shook her head. “I suppose he is on duty... Is that Lajos over there? Does he live here, Mattias?”

  “More or less,” said Mattias vaguely, while I kicked Katalin under the table. If she was not meant to have been here before, it would hardly do to recognize the regular patrons! She immediately looked guilty, but fortunately Mattias was too concerned with the discussion at Lajos’s table.

  “I wonder what that’s all about?” he murmured. “Do you suppose something’s happening at last?”

  He was obviously dying to find out — so was I — but civility compelled him to order our wine and cakes and to wait at least for their arrival. While I looked around me, drinking in the almost feverish excitement evident in the café that night — Lajos’s group was certainly not the only one engrossed in spirited discussion — I gradually became aware that Katalin’s beautiful mouth was beginning to droop with a misery I could understand only too well. The unhappiness of her romance was made all the sharper by fear that Alex would soon be sent to Italy to put down the rebellions which had broken out there since the new year.

  I coughed to attract her attention, casting a quick glance at Mattias. His eyes were unusually serious and, more worryingly, they were fixed on his sister’s tragic face. Even as I looked at him, he put out one hand and lightly touched hers.

  “Are you thinking of Zarescu?” he asked bluntly. “Do you actually love him, Katalin?”

  She met his gaze and didn’t even think of lying.

  “Yes,” she said simply.

  Mattias drew in his breath. “Oh the devil, what a coil! Couldn’t you have chosen more wisely?”

  Katalin shook her head. “No.”

  Just then the waiter appeared and began unloading things from his tray. Mattias sa
t back, but his eyes were still on Katalin.

  “Cheer up,” he said lightly at last. “Something will turn up, you know. It always does.”

  She looked back at him, an arrested expression in her eyes. Mattias poured the wine and politely passed the plate of cakes. By that time, Petöfi was rising to his feet, which seemed to be a signal for the break-up of his party. Mattias followed my gaze and promptly stood up too.

  “Back in two minutes,” he promised, and hastened towards the other table.

  “Do you know,” Katalin said slowly, “that is the first kind thing he has ever said to me about Alex?”

  Behind her, I saw Petöfi with his coat and hat on, making for the door while still talking animatedly over his shoulder to his friends who were all sitting or standing around the same table. I heard one of the young men saying in reply, “All right, all right! We’ll have a National Guard! Good night!”

  And Petöfi laughed and waved and was gone. Lajos was standing by the table, listening to Mattias. I saw him smile and reach across the table for the wine, pouring it out as he answered him. He drank half the glass in one draught, clapped Mattias on the shoulder and went past him, pushing Vasvári towards him instead. The next moment he was strolling in our direction.

  “Good evening,” he said easily. “May I join you?”

  I indicated Mattias’s chair. “On condition that you tell us what you’ve been plotting.”

  He sat down, laying his glass on the table. “You’ll find out soon enough. The Opposition have asked us to draw up a petition and collect signatures to send to the King.”

  My eyes widened. This was recognition, success indeed.

  “They asked you?” Katalin uttered, tactlessly amazed. Lajos’s lip twitched.

  He said gravely, “Not me personally. My friends and me. Young Hungary if you like.”

  “Well, I hope you won’t petition His Majesty for my head,” Katalin said with an attempt at lightness, though there was a glint of suspicion in her eyes.

  “It’s a belief of mine that heads and bodies should remain firmly attached wherever possible. Alex will be sorry to have missed you,” he added casually. “He is on duty tonight.”