"We"ll see about that one of these days in the fencing-school."
"What! That swindling fencing! Wrestling is the thing to test a man"s mettle. That fashionable gymnastic rubbish is a mere farce. I should like to see a fellow do what I can do when I go out on my _puszta_.[23]
I have a stout _gulgasy_[24] there, Peter Gyuricza, with whom I am wont to wrestle. A stalwart fellow, hard as a stone; he can keep the upper hand over a hundred steers. Twice out of three bouts have I floored Peter Gyuricza, and Peter Gyuricza has only floored me once."
[Footnote 23: The Hungarian steppe or great plain.]
[Footnote 24: Neat-herd, peculiar to Hungary.]
"A pretty pastime, certainly."
"It is not to be learnt by pen-scribbling or brush-daubing, anyhow."
That I had to let pa.s.s, for there"s no getting over the truth. It is not only true that I was no Samson, but it is also true that, compared with a hundred oxen, my poor Pegasus was but a sorry beast of draught. But Muki Bagotay was not even content with this triumph, he wanted to absolutely trample me beneath his feet; and as if he had only just observed for the first time the picture of Bessy painted by me, he chose to make _that_ the bone of contention.
"Meanwhile, till I possess the original, I appropriate this picture."
Bessy protested. "No, no, I will not part with that."
But Muki thereupon took the picture from the table and held it aloft, so that Bessy could not get it out of his hand. She begged, implored, raved, but Muki only laughed and said he meant to stick to the picture.
It was then that my ill-humour got the better of me.
"Sir," said I, laying my hand on his shoulder, "put down that portrait!
I did not paint it for you."
How scornfully he looked at me over his shoulder! "_You_ would needs try conclusions with me--_you_, a mere poet!"
And he flung himself upon me with the pious resolve of forcing me out of Bessy"s boudoir into the ante-chamber. When he saw that I resisted, he threw both his arms round my body. I also hugged him, and to work we went straightway.
Muki was furious because I would not allow my frame to be smashed so easily. Bessy began shrieking, and took refuge in the bow window.
Suddenly I rallied all my strength and pitched Muki on to the sofa with such violence that the back of it cracked and came off.
"I also am a Peter Gyuricza!" I cried.
I would not have exchanged that triumph for all the glory in the world.
At the noise of this great scuffle, the mother and the aunt rushed into the room, and great was their indignation when they saw me kneeling on Muki"s breast.
"Let me get up, fellow!" said my antagonist.
All that I wanted to do was to take the portrait from the hands of its unlawful possessor. Meanwhile the poor portrait had got terribly mauled.
During the struggle it had fallen to the ground, and the pair of us had left the impression of our heels upon it. Bessy burst into tears when she saw the wreckage of her own portrait, but her mother lamented over the broken sofa.
I comforted Bessy with the a.s.surance that I would make the damaged portrait all right again--there were special colours for that.
"But she must not sit again," hastily intervened her mother. She was afraid I should begin coming to the house again and spoil the good match.
"And I haven"t got that dress either," said Bessy.
It certainly was a pretty dress. Would that she had never had it!
I a.s.sured them, however, that I would be able to put the picture to rights at home, all by myself. And with that I put it in my pocket. I never went back there again.
The mother and the aunt ostentatiously occupied themselves with Muki, expressing all the time their regretful sympathy, at which he was beside himself for fury.
I beat a retreat without any attempt to say good-bye. But Bessy ran after me, and, overtaking me in the doorway, seized my hand, and whispered in an ardent voice, "You"ll put _me_ to rights, won"t you?"
"The _portrait_? oh yes!"
An hour afterwards I was sitting on the steamer and gazing at the lingering smoke which hid my native town from my eyes. It was just as if I were returning from a funeral.
CHAPTER VII
WELTSCHMERZ CONDITIONS[25]--"REMAIN OR FLY!"
[Footnote 25: _Vilag fajdalmas_ allapotok. There is no English equivalent of _Vilag fajdalmas_.]
When I got back to Pest, I found two letters awaiting me on my writing-table, one from Tony Varady, inviting me to stand G.o.dfather to his new-born son, and the other from Petofi, informing me that he had just been married to Julia Szendrey, and that they were having very happy days at Teleky"s Castle, Kolto. Both of these friends were poor fellows, like myself; and the ladies who had chosen to be their companions through life were girls belonging to wealthy, eminent families, accustomed to luxury and splendour, surrounded by obsequious wooers, and their mothers loved them as the apples of their eyes. Their families opposed the marriages, and the enamoured young ladies, handicapped as they were by the weight of their parents" refusal, followed their beloveds notwithstanding.
Then true love is no dream after all, but pure gold. And yet when I seek this pure gold they call me a crazy alchemist!
And now Petofi begged me by letter to seek out a convenient lodging for him, where they and I could live together. That a newly-married bridegroom should invite his faithful bachelor comrade to be a fellow-lodger with him is a fact which belongs to the realm of fairy tales.
I immediately hunted up in Tobacco Street a nice first-floor-apartment,[26] consisting of three chambers and their domestic offices; the first room was for the Petofis, the second for me, while the intermediate one was to be a common dining-room, and there were separate entrances for each of us.
[Footnote 26: Used here in the French sense of a suite of rooms.]
The young couple came in during the autumn; they kept one maid, and I had an old servant. We had both very primitive furniture. Mrs. Petofi had left her father"s house without a dowry; she had not so much as a fashionable hat to bless herself with; she had sewed herself together a sort of head-dress of her own invention, which she never wore. Her hair was cut short, so that she looked like a little boy. They had nothing, and yet they were very happy! Julia"s sole amus.e.m.e.nt was to learn English from Petofi, and afterwards, at dinner (which was sent in from "The Eagle"), we spoke English, and laughed at each other"s blunders.
And I had to be a witness of their bliss every day!
It was just as if one were to season h.e.l.l with piquant pepper.
Just about this time there appeared in _Eletkepek_ some very ordinary verses ent.i.tled "Word-Echoes," by one "Aggteleki,"[27] ostensibly addressed to a certain actress. I am now able to confess that _I_ was the author of those verses. But for all that (though the verses were not so bad) I solemnly forbid any one at any time to include these verses among my works, for even now, forty years after the event, I am not such an old, decrepit, suicidally inclined fellow as Aggteleki was.
[Footnote 27: Aged Teleki.]
But, indeed, every one of the works that I wrote at that period breathe the same bitter tone. The paroxysms of a crushed spirit, the dreamy phantoms of a diseased imagination, self-contempt, a moon-sick view of the world in general, characterise all my tales belonging to that period. And yet they pleased people then. I even had imitators. I turned Petofi himself away from the right path. He himself confessed that his novel ent.i.tled "Hoher Kotele"[28] was written under the influence of my "Nyomarek naploja,"[29] a literary abortion.
[Footnote 28: "The Hangman"s Rope." It certainly is a wretched performance.--TR.]
[Footnote 29: "The Cripple"s Diary."]