They Were Found Wanting by Miklós Bánffy Read Free Book Online Page B

any of them since her thirteenth birthday. She would hear, for example, that one of them had been to Denestornya to buy the yearling colts, or the lambs or fatted pigs; but though it was always one of the sons who made their purchases and never the father, not one of her former playmates ever came up to the castle but remained instead below in the farm buildings with the estate manager. Only Boldizsar used to write to her every year on her birthday from somewhere in the meadow country. Since she had celebrated her fiftieth anniversary he had sent cards never failing to mention which birthday it was.
    Why he did this Countess Roza never discovered. She was sure that it was done to tease her, perhaps as a belated revenge for some forgotten offence, and it caused her great annoyance. This was now the third birthday on which the arrival of Kozma’s card had put her in a bad mood.
    In the morning her son Balint had arrived from Budapest and until after lunch she was happy and gay. In the afternoon, however , the fateful card arrived and for Countess Roza the brightness faded from the day. As a result she, who was usually too good-natured to permit malicious gossip in her presence, said nothing when her two housekeepers, Mrs Tothy and Mrs Baczo, who always took their lunch with her, started to spice the coffee with ill-natured tales about the Abadys’ friends and neighbours.
    Never stopping their knitting the two elderly women sat at each end of a long table, perched on chairs disproportionately small for their short fat bodies, and kept up an unending stream of malevolent calumny. Although they were in the countess’s presence they knitted away and chatted rapidly as if they were talking only to each other. And when they related some exceptionally shocking tale they would stab their needles into their half-finished work as if despatching the culprit in self-righteous virtue. This went on for a long time. Balint listened in silence.
    At last it was half-past three and the first callers arrived to offer their congratulations. The two housekeepers rose and discreetly disappeared.

    As the afternoon progressed more and more visitors were announced until both the large and small drawing-rooms were filled with people. In the larger room the hostess sat in the usual place in the centre of the sofa. In front of her, grouped around the tea-table, sat the older ladies; the mothers, countesses Gyalakuthy, Kamuthy and Laczok, and with them was the ancient Countess Sarmasaghy, Aunt Lizinka to almost everybody in Transylvania, tiny, shrivelled, amusing and malicious, who talked unceasingly both of politics and of the failings of all her friends and relations, and who was never afraid to use a coarse word, though in a most refined way, if she felt her stories needed emphasis.
    Deploring the general wickedness of the world she covered much the same ground as had the two housekeepers an hour or so before. The chief target that afternoon was Adrienne Miloth, wife of Pali Uzdy, who, declared Aunt Lizinka, was an incorrigible flirt who had set her cap at every man in their circle ever since she had come to town for the carnival season.
    ‘… and she’s not content – oh, dear me, no! – to turn the head of my poor nephew, Pityu Kendy, as she did last year, or of that great dumb Adam Alvinczy – and they are just two among a whole throng of others,’ croaked Aunt Lizinka in her guinea-fowl voice, ‘… so she’s now seduced my other nephew, Ambrus. Of course I haven’t seen it with my own eyes but Ambrus isn’t the sort of man to be satisfied by sweet talk alone. Oh no! I’m sure she’s put more in his mouth than honey-covered words. No doubt of it. Maybe they’re careful but it’s well-known that a stallion like Ambrus doesn’t stop at neighing. And what’s more – and I know it for a fact as my cook told me – that when poor Uzdy’s away Ambrus is always hanging about the house even if no one sees him.’
    The other ladies just