Part 14 (2/2)
”Well, I can do that for you--for nothing.”
To write this letter I had to sit down at my writing-table.
”May I peep and see what you write about me?”
”If you like.”
I could not take offence at her curiosity.
”I'll help you!” said she, with nave archness, and went and stood behind my back.
I must say that she had a very odd notion of helping me. She leant right over me so that I could feel her burning breath on my face, and the throbbing of her heart against my shoulder. I spoiled the first sheet of paper by writing last year's date at the top of it. Then I could not call to mind the name of my client, and I thought one thing and wrote another. Add to that that I made a mess of the simplest sentences, and wrote in a style worthy of a pedantic grammarian. Finally I got hopelessly involved in the maze of a long-winded phrase which I began but could not finish. That's what happens to a man when he has to listen to the beating of two hearts!
It was on this self-same table that the picture stood which I have already mentioned. I had no time to conceal it in my drawer. And why should I have tried to hide it? Was I bound to make a mystery of it before her?
Right opposite to my writing-table was a mirror on the wall. On one occasion, when I was pursuing an elusive word, I raised my head from my writing-desk and saw in the mirror the figure of the woman who was standing behind my back. Oh, what a face was that! She was not looking into my letter, but at the portrait. The eyes were turned sideways, so that the upper parts of the whites were visible; the lips were drawn aside, and the teeth clenched.
I saw this from the mirror. And this mirror, too had the property of making things look green. Viewed in this magic light, the fair lady standing behind me appeared like the Iblis of the _Thousand-and-one Nights_, who sucks the blood of her lovers and leads the dances of the dead.
I finished the letter to my old chiefs.
Then I dried it with a piece of blotting-paper. Sand I have always hated. I also felt, in this respect, like Stephen Szechenyi,[44] who, whenever he received a sanded-letter, used to give it first of all to his lackey to be taken out in the hall and dusted. Before enclosing the letter, however, I turned round and handed it to her.
[Footnote 44: Count Stephen Szechenyi, ”the greatest of the Magyars,”
was born in 1791. He brilliantly distinguished himself at the battle of Leipsic, and at Tolentino, in 1815, at the head of his Hussars, annihilated Murat's cavalry. After the war, he devoted himself to domestic politics with a tact, courage, and n.o.ble liberality which speedily made him the most popular man in Hungary. The Hungarian Academy and the Hungarian National Theatre were founded at his initiative and mainly at his expense. The breach with Austria in 1848 so preyed upon his mind that he went mad, and was confined in an asylum, where he destroyed himself in 1860.--TR.]
”Would you read it, please?”
The menacing spectre was no longer there. Iblis had changed into a smiling young bride.
”And how do you know that I haven't read the letter?” she asked, in her astonishment.
”My little finger whispered it to me!”
At this she burst out laughing, and pushed the letter away.
”I don't mean to read it! I know that you have written no end of good things about me.”
I folded up my letter, sealed it and wrote the address--”Joseph Molnar and Alexander Verchovszky, Advocates.” Then I handed it to her.
Still she kept standing there in front of my writing-table, twirling the letter round and round in her hands, and gazing continually at the portrait. Her face had become quite solemn. In her deeply downcast eyes there was a suspicious brightness testifying to restrained tear-drops.
She heaved a deep sigh.
”But this is mere folly!” She thrust my letter beneath her bodice, and in a voice of real warmth and sincerity, she stammered: ”I thank you most kindly.” Then she added, in a voice half grave, half gay: ”But come now! You won't write my story in the newspapers, will you?”
<script>