Loyal in All Page 2

  “You should have known Budapest before the war!” her mother had sometimes said to Marika, even when she was a child.

  And—“You should have seen Budapest before the war!” her grandmother sometimes said to her now. Only she meant the first World War, and she looked nostalgically back to a time when Budapest was still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the almost legendary figure of an Emperor who had reigned for more than half a century held court in Vienna.

  “It is not possible to give you any idea of the charm and elegance and gaiety of that world,” she told Marika, sitting very upright in her incongruously magnificent chair, in one of the two rather bare rooms left to her in the great country house which had once been hers. “We used to go to Vienna, of course, for the Court balls and some of the special festivities. But even the Viennese used to come to Budapest for its gaiety and colour. Ai-ai! Everything passes, and one is at least fortunate to have known how things should be. You, poor child, will never know.”

  Marika, who found both her grandmother and her reminiscences entrancing, did not at all mind being pitied in this way. One could not have everything, and she was not at all sure that she would want to trade her youth for even the most radiant of memories.

  Thinking of her grandmother now, as she walked along beside von Raszay, she recalled again how important her mother’s visit would be to the proud, lonely old lady, and she said aloud.

  “Even if you think it unwise for Mother to come, and wrong of me not to stop her, you must allow that this visit will mean almost everything to Nagyanya—to my grandmother. Mother is her only child—and it’s so many years!”

  “Does she know that your mother is coming?”

  “No. It is to be a surprise for her too.”

  “If she did know, I imagine she would not accept such a sacrifice.”

  “Sacrifice! You talk in such melodramatic terms,” exclaimed Marika, impatient at last. “And I have no taste for melodrama, Herr Doktor.”

  “But life has a curious habit of disregarding our tastes,” was the impassive reply. “And in Budapest things do not happen at all as they do in—London, for instance.”

  “No, I know. But on the surface at least, for the foreign visitor, it is all curiously normal. I have lived here three months without anything in the least sensational happening to me. Why should I not let my mother join me and enjoy the same experience?”

  “Because to invite someone to join you on a slumbering volcano is neither friendly nor sensible.”

  “That’s the second time you’ve referred to the situation here as a volcano.” She stopped suddenly and faced him in the deserted street. “Tell me—are you just expressing a general uneasiness? or—or—” she groped for words in which to describe the disquiet which had at last communicated itself to her—“or have you some specific reason for expecting an eruption?”

  There was a second’s pause. Then he said elliptically, “I am not just expressing a general uneasiness.”

  “Then—” she was more shaken than she would have believed possible—“you think—you know—”

  His fingers closed on her arm so sharply that she felt each one distinctly through her coat-sleeve, and the shock of it stopped her words.

  “One does not say aloud, even to the walls, what one thinks. Still less what one knows. I have told you all I can. If I did not like and respect you, I would not have said as much. Now I shall say no more.” And he shrugged, with a peculiar air of washing his hands of her.

  For a moment they stood, absolutely silent, in the quiet, darkening street. And, with the tall, silent houses looking blankly down upon them, Marika felt an alarm and a sense of urgency which had not been possible in the reassuring warmth and familiarity of the coffee-house.

  “If you are right,” she said slowly at last, “and I have been very foolish in inviting my mother here, I might reach her by telegram in Vienna. She was to stay there with friends for a couple of days.”

  “The telegram must say nothing compromising, you understand. No faintest hint of anything I have said.”

  “No, of course not. But I must give her some overwhelming reason for stopping on the very verge of a longed-for meeting.”

  “It must be a personal reason.”

  “Such as—”

  “Your own immediate departure.”

  “But—” Marika was dismayed—“I don’t want—”

  “It is imperative, you little fool, don’t you understand? It is imperative!”

  Inconceivably, his rudeness flattered rather than affronted her, carrying, as it did, an implication of genuine anxiety on her behalf.

  “I—I could at least say I had to join her in Vienna, which would stop her for a day or two. And I could follow up my own message later.”

  “Not much later,” he warned. “And send the telegram tonight.”

  They had been walking on during the last few minutes and had almost reached the entrance to the clinic. On sudden impulse, he said abruptly,

  “I will come in with you. I can make a visit to one of the patients. Write out your telegram and I will send it for you.”

  “But—” it was her instinct to refuse to be stampeded quite so arbitrarily—“I should like to think a little longer—”

  “Do you never do just what you are told, without question?” he enquired. And for a moment an amused, exasperated smile softened the tenseness of his thin, dark face.

  “Only if you order me, as a doctor.” She smiled too, moved by the charm of that unexpectedly softened tone.

  “Perhaps it is only as a doctor that one should give orders,” he conceded. “Then I ask you—I implore you, as a man and a friend, I hope, to do what I suggest.”

  “Very well.” It was impossible to resist the good-looking ,authoritative doctor in this unfamiliar mood. Besides, something deep down inside her—perhaps her instinct for self-preservation—told her that the time for arguing was past.

  Together they entered the clinic, pausing automatically at the porter’s desk for messages, though Marika at least did not expect any on her last evening. There was, however, one for her. Delivered over the telephone less than half an hour ago, the man informed her. And while Dr. von Raszay examined his mail, she glanced down at the roughly scribbled message.

  “Mrs. Stevens has arrived at the Danube Hotel,” she read. “Please telephone as soon as possible.”

  “She is here!” Breathlessly and a trifle pale, Marika thrust the slip of paper towards von Raszay as though it were as important to him as to her. “Mother is already here. She could not have stopped in Vienna, after all.”

  And suddenly Marika knew, to the marrow of her bones, that the conversation she had treated so lightly at first was a vital one. She could not have said why, but her conviction was complete that what Dr. von Raszay had said was not just the prompting of a dictatorial man used to ordering the lives of his nursing staff. It was a desperately knowledgeable warning that had come too late.

  Characteristically, the doctor himself was perfectly calm, now that the situation was beyond altering. His expression reminded her a little of the way he had looked when her small charge had suffered a dangerous relapse and only his bold intervention had saved the child’s life.

  “There is nothing to do now,” he said quietly, almost casually, “except to see that she stays for as short a time as possible. Please make her understand that both of you should leave the country as soon as you can. Can you at least get her out of Budapest almost immediately?”

  “I think so. Yes, of course. She will naturally go to my grandmother, about an hour’s journey outside the city. But I don’t know about her staying there. There are only two rooms. And, anyway, she will want to be near my father, I think, If—”

  “Make her stay there if you can.”

  “I’ll do my best. I think I’ll move over to the hotel tonight, instead of in the morning. My luggage is ready and I’ve said all the good-byes. Except—” she hesitated and was surprised to he
ar a slight catch in her own voice—“to you.”

  “You need not say that yet.” He smiled briefly. “I shall be seeing you again.”

  He did not say how or when, but she was strangely comforted by this assurance. Then he kissed her hand and left her, and Marika set about making the last arrangements for her transfer from the clinic to the Danube Hotel.

  Earlier that day she had thought how sorry she was to be going. But now, after the disquieting things Dr. von Raszay had said, she found that she was relieved to be making at least the first step away from a situation which vaguely frightened her.

  A shabby, rather musty-smelling taxi conveyed her and her luggage to the Danube Hotel. And here, after enquiry at the desk, she was wafted upward to the fourth floor in a lift that was the size of a small room but greatly in need of some paint.

  The cream paint in the long, wide corridor was old and dull too, and the once beautiful carpet was threadbare. There was an indescribably melancholy air of decayed splendour about the place, but Marika was so used to this now in Budapest that she hardly noticed it. All she thought was that in a few moments she would see her mother—and have to find some reason for persuading her to leave almost immediately.

  “Come in!” called the light, gay, familiar voice when she knocked on the door. And for a moment Marika felt she must surely have imagined the extraordinary conversation with the doctor that evening. For her mother’s voice was associated only with the safe, familiar, normal things of her life, and before it melodramatic possibilities seemed to fade.

  Marika entered the huge, high-ceilinged room, and her mother, who was obviously unpacking, cried, “Darling!” and came towards her still holding a couple of dresses over her arm.

  “How wonderful!” She embraced Marika without crushing the dresses, imperilling her softly beautiful make-up or putting a hair of her child’s head out of place. “This is like coming home—except that it’s so queer and faded. I never thought to see this hotel so shabby. You should have seen it in the old days! I had a room like this once—perhaps the very same room—when I was a girl. It was fit for a duchess then—and now look at it!”

  Marika looked at it, and her immediate reflection was that it was big enough for a small private ward. The enormous downy bed seemed a long way away, viewed across a vista of beautiful but faded carpet and enough sofas and armchairs to equip a fair-sized lounge.

  “It looks comfortable anyway.” She hugged her mother. “I’m sorry you overlook the main street, though.” She went to one of the long, balconied windows and looked out. “It may be noisy.”

  “I like it that way. It makes me feel like a little girl to look down into the streets I knew. Only—” Marika turned, to see the unfamiliar tears in her mother’s eyes, and guessing that the memories of the irretrievable past were crowding too thick upon her, she said quickly.

  “I’ve been to see Nagyanya often. But I didn’t tell her you were coming, Mother, for fear something should have prevented you.”

  “Nothing would have prevented me, darling! I’m so happy to have this wonderful chance. It must be a long, long visit, so that we can bridge all the years between.”

  “Well—” Marika felt guiltily that von Raszay have expected her to seize this opening—“I don’t know about a long visit, dear. We may have to make it rather short. But—” cowardice overcame her—“we can discuss that later. After dinner.”

  “Yes, yes. I’m famished. I didn’t eat on the train.”

  “Then let’s go down. There’s a wonderful restaurant her.”

  “Of course. That at least won’t have changed. Empires may fall and civilizations crumble, but Hungarians will still go on serving the best meals in the world.” Mrs. Stevens was gay again. “How well you look, my darling. Are you in love?”

  “No! Of course not.”

  “Why of course not?” Her mother crossed to the mirror and lightly dusted powder over her lovely face and ran a comb through her still bright hair. “When I was a girl one always fell in love in Budapest. The men are so handsome. Besides, there is something in the air. Like Vienna, only more so. But perhaps—” she sighed suddenly—“that isn’t so any longer either.”

  “You didn’t stop in Vienna, after all?” Again Marika tried to divert her mother from nostalgic memories.

  “Only one night. The Meiers had gone to Tirol for winter sports, so I came almost straight on here.”

  “I see.”

  “Does it matter?” Her mother paused, lipstick suspended, and regarded Marika in the mirror.

  “N-no. I was going to telegraph to stop you, that’s all.”

  “To stop me! At this juncture? But why?”

  “Well, I—I—” suddenly inspiration came to her—“I’m having difficulty about extending my visa. I may not be allowed to stay on.”

  “So?” Her mother looked momentarily perplexed. Then her face cleared. “Your father will do something about it. He always could. What is the Diplomatic Service for if it can’t do a little thing like that?”

  “But it’s not a little thing. He may not be able—” “Have you seen much of him while you have been here?’

  “Of course.”

  “Did he ask about me?”

  “I told him without waiting to be asked, and he was obviously interested in everything you were doing.”

  “He was? Come, that’s fine!” Mrs. Stevens laughed, half mocking, half pleased, Marika thought. “Let us go down and eat.”

  So they went down together to the big, half-deserted restaurant where, sure enough, the most wonderful food was still obtainable. It was a very old waiter who attended to them, and Marika saw her mother watching him thoughtfully. Then, as he bent to set a plate before her, she said, almost tenderly,

  “It is Lajos, isn’t it?”

  He raised faded brown eyes and peered at her.

  “Yes, Madame. But—I don’t remember. Nowadays, I don’t remember as well as I used to—”

  “It’s a long time ago, when I was a girl.” Mrs. Stevens smiled, and Marika thought suddenly what a ravishing girl her mother must have been. “Varszany was head waiter here then.”

  “Oh, Madame, don’t speak of him.” The old man glanced round apprehensively. “He is gone, you know.”

  “Do you mean he died?”

  “I—yes, I suppose so. One doesn’t know. He is—gone, you understand.” And he made a trembling gesture, expressive of the complete disappearance of Varszany.

  “Like so many things, Lajos.”

  “Like so many things, Madame.” For a moment they looked at each other—the rather bent old waiter and the beautiful woman whose Balkan charm still mingled curiously with twenty-five years of British veneer. “It is best not to talk or think of these things.” And, almost as though to give point to the words, from the street outside there came a sudden burst of gunfire—sharp, clear, unmistakable in the quiet of the night.

  “What’s that?” Mrs. Stevens looked more astonished than alarmed. But the old waiter’s face went a sickly white.

  “I do not know, Madame. It is better not to ask. It is better not to ask.” And he slipped away.

  “How extraordinary.” Marika’s mother turned to her. “What do you suppose it is?”

  “I don’t know.” Marika too was pale, as another burst of firing mingled with shouts, and then the sounds faded away into the distance. “I suppose, from the waiter’s expression, that it—it might be the secret police after someone.”

  They both looked down at their plates, not finding the food so delicious as it had seemed five minutes ago. Then Marika began to ask determinedly about the family and her friends in London.

  “Rodney Dering was on my train. He travelled as far as Vienna.” Mrs. Stevens grasped at a topic which she evidently felt would distract them both. “He said he might possibly come on here. I think it was as much to see you as for anything connected with his paper.”

  “Oh, he’d much better not come!” With von Raszay’s warning still
in her ears, and the sound of that firing still plucking at her nerves, Marika felt too many people were converging on this city.

  “Why not, my dear? I thought you would be very happy to meet him again.”

  “But not here. It would be better if we—Mother, why don’t you and I go back to Vienna, while—”

  “Darling, are you crazy? I have come here to see Nagyanya. Remember?” Mrs. Stevens spoke quite sharply. “You’re not going to panic because someone lets off a gun in the street, are you?”

  “No, of course not. But—”

  “I know.” Her mother was suddenly all sympathetic understanding. “It was the mention of Rodney, wasn’t it? You’re really very fond of him, Marika, aren’t you?”

  “I—yes, I suppose so.”

  Back in London that would have seemed the most ridiculously inadequate way of describing what she felt for Rodney Dering. But then she had tried to tell herself she must forget him, and, somehow, even his image had faded slightly in the last few weeks.

  Now, the sudden mention of him brought him clearly before her again. Tall, fair, imperturbable in the face of all sorts of risk, he was already considered a daring and brilliant journalist. Somehow, just to know that he was not so far away did make one feel better. It also made one feel that those harsh, disquieting warnings, given earlier in the evening, were perhaps rather exaggerated, after all.

  “Tell me what he has been doing.” Marika put her elbows on the table and smiled at her mother, as though Rodney’s actions mildly amused her and had never, never been a matter of anguished interest to her. “Are there still rumours that he is going to marry Teresa Marne?”

  “Why, darling, no! Where have you been? Oh, of course, you won’t have seen any English papers here, so you won’t know that Teresa eloped with her own producer. In any case, I don’t think there was ever anything in that story. I’m inclined to think Rodney’s in love with you, if with anyone.”