They Were Divided by Miklós Bánffy Page B

unnecessary questions and appearing to weigh up, once more, the arguments and reasoning which had led to her deciding to make a saddle-horse of the Merges filly and send the other two for carriage-training . Then mother and son walked back together to the castle door … and all the while she was keeping the talk going as long as she could so as to give her more time to look into his eyes and study his expression. There certainly was a difference, but what had caused the change she could only wonder.

    Tea had been laid on the covered veranda outside the big first-floor drawing-room in the west wing.
    For the countess only coffee and buffalo milk was served, but as Balint had just arrived the housekeepers quickly put out a full spread of cold meats, hot bread, sweet and savoury cakes, freshly churned butter so rich that it was practically melting on its silver dish, honey in the comb, quince jelly and three different sorts ofjam. As if this were not more than enough Mrs Tothy and Mrs Baczo reappeared every few minutes carrying in more covered dishes of hot cakes and doughnuts straight from the oven, fritters, muffins and scones; and then they stood silently to one side with huge smiles on their fat little faces as the son of the house fell on the unexpected repast with the appetite of a wolf.
    Countess Roza watched it all with a secret smile that could hardly have been detected by anyone else, casting covert glances at her son’s expression as he devoured dish after dish. Not that she asked anything about what she most wanted to know, for she knew better than that. Instead she kept up a flow of small talk, recounting what had happened at home during the five days since her son had gone to the opera in Kolozsvar. Holes had been dug in the orchard where they had planned to put in some seedling fruit-trees; that morning there had been some early frost, but only on the lower meadows near the river; the young footman Sandor had announced that he would soon be getting married; and that very same morning they had heard a fallow buck calling from some way off in the park. And with every little tale that she told Countess Roza was wondering: what has happened? What could have happened to put him in such a good humour all of a sudden? And what could she do to find out?
    By now the sun was beginning to set. The peaks of the Jara mountains turned slowly to purple and the sky above was streaked with orange and deep carmine. Here and there thin vaporous clouds were to be seen, and through them the rays from the sinking sun soared high above etching great lines of fire on the brilliant green and pale blue of the darkening heavens. The edges of the few clouds were ringed with a rosy fire and it seemed as if the whole world were bathed in a golden light that reached all around them, penetrating even the dark entrance to the Torda gorge, casting a soft glow over the distant grasslands of the Keresztes plain and on the nearby river banks, and even into the deepest recesses of the wide glazed veranda.
    Blinking slightly at all this brightness Countess Roza at last tried a more direct approach. Brightly, but still carefully, she said:
    ‘But you haven’t told me about the opera! How was the Madam Butterfly ? Was it well done? Was it as beautiful as everyone expected?’
    Balint gave a few banal replies saying that, oh yes, it had been lovely, very grand, very beautiful.
    ‘And the French singer?’
    ‘Excellent. Really beautiful! Superb!’
    All these answers, despite their superlatives, he gave somewhat hurriedly without offering a single phrase to explain what he meant or justify his praise. It seemed that for some reason of his own he did not want to be forced into giving details and, as this was so unlike her son, who never had any difficulty in expressing himself with ease and fluency and whose descriptions of what he had heard or seen were usually vivid and to the point, Countess Roza realized at once that she was on the right track and