THE OLD HOUSE

A Novel

By
CÉCILE TORMAY

TRANSLATED FROM THE HUNGARIAN BY
E. TORDAY

ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY
1922 : : : : NEW YORK

Copyright, 1922, by
Robert M. McBride & Co.

Printed in the
United States of America

Published, September, 1922

CHAPTER I

1

It was evening. Winter hung white over the earth. Great snowflakes crept over the snow towards the coach. They moved ghostlike over the silent, treeless plain. Mountains rose behind them in the snow. Small church towers and roofs crowded over each other. Here and there little squares flared up in the darkness.

Night fell as the coach reached the excise barrier. Beyond, two sentry boxes buried in the snow faced each other. The coachman shouted between his hands. A drowsy voice answered and white cockades began to move in the dark recesses of the boxes. The light of a lamp emerged from the guard’s cottage. Behind the gleam a man with a rifle over his arm strolled towards the vehicle.

The high-wheeled travelling coach was painted in two colours: the upper part dark green, the lower, including the wheels, bright yellow. From near the driver’s seat small oil lamps shed their light over the horses’ backs. The animals steamed in the cold.

The guard lifted his lantern. At the touch of the crude light, the coach window rattled and descended. In its empty frame appeared a powerful grey head. Two steady cold eyes looked into the guard’s face. The man stepped back. He bowed respectfully.

“The Ulwing coach!” He drew the barrier aside. The civil guards in the sentry boxes presented arms.

“You may pass!”

The light of the coach’s lamps wandered over crooked palings, over waste ground—a large deserted market—the wall of a church. Along the winding lanes lightless houses, squatting above the ditches, sulked with closed eyes in the dark. Further on the houses became higher. Not a living thing was to be seen until near the palace of Prince Grassalkovich a night-watchman waded through the snow. From the end of a stick he held in his hand dangled a lantern. The shadow of his halberd moved on the wall like some black beast rearing over his head.

From the tower of the town hall a hoarse voice shouted into the quiet night: “Praised be the Lord Jesus!” and higher up the watchman announced that he was awake.

Then the township relapsed into silence. Snow fell leisurely between old gabled roofs. Under jutting eaves streets crept forth from all sides, crooked, suspicious, like conspirators. Where they met they formed a ramshackle square. In the middle of the square the Servites’ Fountain played in front of the church; water murmured frigidly from its spout like a voice from the dark that prayed slowly, haltingly.

A solitary lamp at a corner house thrust out from an iron bracket into the street. Whenever it rocked at the wind’s pleasure, the chain creaked gently and the beam of its light shrunk on the wall till it was no bigger than a child’s fist. Another lone lamp in the middle of New Market Place. Its smoky light was absorbed by the falling snow and never reached the ground.

Christopher Ulwing drew his head into his fur-collared coat. The almanac proclaimed full moon for to-night. Whenever this happened, the civic authorities saved lamp-oil; could they accept responsibility if the heavens failed to comply with the calendar and left the town in darkness? In any case, at this time of night the only place for peaceful citizens was by their own fireside.

Two lamps alight.... And even these were superfluous.

Pest, the old-fashioned little town had gone to rest and the fancy came to Christopher Ulwing that it was asleep even in day time, and that he was the only person in it who was ever quite awake.

He raised his head; the Leopold suburb had been reached. The carriage had come to the end of the rough, jerky cobbles. Under the wheels the ruts became soft and deep. The breeze blowing from the direction of the Danube ruffled the horses’ manes gently.

All of a sudden, a clear, pleasant murmur broke the silence. The great life-giving river pursued its mysterious course through the darkness, invisible even as life itself.

Beyond it were massed the white hills of Buda. On the Pest side an uninterrupted plain stretched between the town and the river. In the white waste the house of Christopher Ulwing stood alone. For well nigh thirty years it had been called in town “the new house.” The building of it had been a great event. The citizens of the Inner Town used to make excursions on Sundays to see it. They looked at it, discussed it, and shook their heads. They could not grasp why Ulwing the builder should put his house there in the sand when plenty of building ground could be got cheaply, in the lovely narrow streets of the Inner Town. But he would have his own way and loved his house all the more. The child of his mind, the product of his work, his bricks, it was entirely his own. Though once upon a time....

While Christopher Ulwing listened unconsciously to the murmur of the Danube, silent shades rose from afar and spoke to his soul. He thought of the ancient Ulwings who had lived in the great dark German forest. They were woodcutters on the shores of the Danube and they followed their calling downstream. Some acquired citizenship in a small German town. They became master carpenters and smiths. They worked oak and iron, simple, rude materials, and were moulded in the image of the stuff they worked in. Honest, strong men. Then one happened to wander into Hungary; he settled down in Pozsony and became apprenticed to a goldsmith. He wrought in gold and ivory. His hand became lighter, his eye more sensitive than his ancestors’. He was an artist.... Christopher Ulwing thought of him—his father. There were two boys, he and his brother Sebastian, and when the parental house became empty, they too like those before them, heard the call. They left Pozsony on the banks of the Danube. They followed the river, orphans, poor.

Many a year had passed since. Many a thing had changed.

Christopher Ulwing drew out his snuff box. It was his father’s work and his only inheritance. He tapped it lightly with two fingers. As it sank back into his pocket, he bent towards the window.

His house now became distinctly visible; the steep double roof, the compact storied front, the mullioned windows in the yellow wall, the door of solid oak with its semi-circular top like a pair of frowning eyebrows. Two urns stood above the ends of the cornice and two caryatid pillars flanked the door. Every recess, every protruding wall of the house appeared soft and white.

Indoors the coach had been noticed. The windows of the upper story became first light and then dark again in quick succession. Someone was running along the rooms with a candle. The big oak gate opened. The wheels clattered, the travelling box was jerked against the back of the coach and all of a sudden the caryatids—human pillars—looked into the coach window. The noise of the hoofs and the wheels echoed like thunder under the archway of the porch.

The manservant lowered the steps of the coach.

A young man stood on the landing of the staircase. He held a candle high above his head. The light streamed over his thick fair hair. His face was in the shade.

“Good evening, John Hubert!” shouted Ulwing to his son. His voice sounded deep and sharp, like a hammer dropping on steel. “How are the children?” He turned quickly round. This sudden movement flung the many capes of his coat over his shoulders.

The servant’s good-natured face emerged from the darkness.

“The book-keeper has been waiting for a long time....”

“Is everybody asleep in this town?”

“Of course I am not asleep, of course I am not——” and there was Augustus Füger rushing down the stairs. He was always in a hurry, his breath came short, he held his small bald head on one side as if he were listening.

Christopher Ulwing slapped him on the back.

“Sorry, Füger. My day lasts as long as my work.”

John Hubert came to meet his father. His coat was bottle green. His waistcoat and nankin trousers were buff. On his exaggeratedly high collar the necktie, twisted twice round, displayed itself in elegant folds. He bowed respectfully and kissed his father’s hand. He resembled him, but he was shorter, his eyes were paler and his face softer.

A petticoat rustled on the square slabs of the dark corridor behind them.

Christopher Ulwing did not even turn round. “Good evening, Mamsell. I am not hungry.” Throwing his overcoat on a chair, he went into his room.

Mamsell Tini’s long, stiff face, flanked by two hair cushions covering her ears, looked disappointedly after the builder; she had kept his supper in vain. She threw her key-basket from one arm to the other and sailed angrily back into the darkness of the corridor.

The room of Christopher Ulwing was low and vaulted. White muslin curtains hung at its two bay windows. On the round table, a candle was burning; it was made of tallow but stood in a silver candle-stick. Its light flickered slowly over the checked linen covers of the spacious armchairs.

“Sit down, Füger. You, too,” said Ulwing to his son, but remained standing himself.

“The Palatine has entrusted me with the repair of the castle. I concluded the bargain about the forest.” He took a letter up from the table. Whatever he wanted his hand seized, his fist grabbed, without hesitation. Meanwhile he dictated short, precise instructions to the book-keeper.

Füger wrote hurriedly in his yellow-covered note book. He always carried it about him; even when he went to Mass it peeped out of his pocket.

John Hubert sat uncomfortably in the bulging armchair. Above the sofa hung the portraits of the architects Fischer von Erlach and Mansard, fine old small engravings. He knew those two faces, but took no interest in them. He began to look at the green wall paper. Small squares, green wreaths. He looked at each of them separately. Meanwhile he became drowsy. Several times he withdrew the big-headed pin which fastened the tidy to the armchair and each time restuck it in the same place. Then he coughed, though he really wanted to yawn.

Füger was still taking notes. He only spoke when the builder had stopped.

“Mr. Münster called here. His creditors are driving him into bankruptcy.”

Christopher Ulwing’s look became stern.

“Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

Füger shrugged his shoulders.

“I haven’t had a chance to put a word in....”

The builder stood motionless in the middle of the room. He contracted his brows as if he were peering into the far distance.

Martin George Münster, the powerful contractor, the qualified architect, was ruined. The last rival, the great enemy who had so many times baulked him, counted no more. He thought of humiliations, of breathless hard fights, and of the many men who had had to go down that he might rise. He had vanquished them all. Now, at last, he was really at the top.

With his big fingers he gave a contented twist to the smart white curl which he wore on the side of his head.

Füger watched him attentively. Just then, the candle lit up the builder’s bony, clean-shaven face, tanned by the cold wind. His hair and eyebrows seemed whiter, his eyes bluer than usual. His chin, turned slightly to one side and drawn tightly into an open white collar, gave him a peculiar, obstinate expression.

“There is no sign of old age about him!” thought the little book-keeper, and waited to be addressed.

“Mr. Münster lost three hundred thousand Rhenish guldens. He could not stand that.”

Christopher Ulwing nodded. Meanwhile he calculated, cool and unmoved.

“I must see the books and balance sheet of Münster’s firm.” While he spoke, he reflected that he was now rich enough to have a heart. A heart is a great burden and hampers a man in his movements. As long as he was rising, he had had to set it aside. That was over. He had reached the summit.

“I will help Martin George Münster,” he said quietly, “I will put him on his legs again, but so that in future he shall stand by me, not against me.”

Füger, moved, blinked several times in quick succession under his spectacles, as if applauding his master with his eyelids.

This settled business for Christopher Ulwing. He snuffed the candle. Turning to his son:

“Have you been to the Town Hall?”

John Hubert felt his father’s voice as if it had gripped him by the shoulder and shaken him.

“Are you not tired, sir?” As a last defence this question rose to his lips. It might free him and leave the matter till to-morrow. But his father did not even deem it deserving of an answer.

“Did you make a speech?”

“Yes....” John Hubert’s voice was soft and hesitating. He always spoke his words in such a way as to make it easy to withdraw them. “I said what you told me to, but I fear it did little good....”

“You think so?” For a moment a cunning light flashed up in Christopher Ulwing’s eye, then he smiled contemptuously. “True. Such as we must act. We may think too, but only if we get a great gentleman to tell our thoughts. Nevertheless, I want you to speak. I shall make of you a gentleman great enough to get a hearing.”

Füger bowed. John Hubert began to complain. “When I proposed to plant trees along the streets of the town, a citizen asked me if I had become a gardener. As to the lighting of the streets they said that drunkards can cling to the walls of the houses. A lamp-post would serve no other purpose.”

“That will change!” The builder’s voice warmed with great strong confidence.

Young Ulwing continued without warmth.

“I told them of our new brickfields and informed them that henceforth we shall sell bricks by retail to the suburban people. This did not please them. The councillors whispered together.”

“What did they say?” asked Christopher Ulwing coldly.

John Hubert cast his eyes down.

“Well, they said that the great carpenter had always made gold out of other people’s misery. The great carpenter! That is what they call you, sir, among themselves, though they presented you last year with the freedom of the city....”

Ulwing waved his hand disparagingly.

“Whatever honours I received from the Town Hall count for little. They have laden me with them for their weight to hamper my movements, so that I may let them sleep in peace.”

“And steal in peace,” said Füger, making an ironical circular movement with his hand towards his pocket.

“Let them be,” growled the builder, “there is many an honest man among them.”

The book-keeper stretched his neck as if he were listening intently, then bowed solemnly and left the room.

Christopher Ulwing, left alone with his son, turned sharply to him.

“What else did you say in the Town Hall?”

“But you gave me no other instructions...?”

“Surely you must have said something more? Something of your own?”

There was silence.

Young Ulwing had a feeling that he was treated with great injustice. Was not his father responsible for everything? He had made him a man. And now he was discontented with his achievement. In an instant, like lightning, it all flashed across his mind. His childhood, his years in the technical school, much timid fluttering, nameless bitterness, cowardly compromise. And those times, when he still had a will to will, when he wanted to love and choose: it was crushed by his father. His father chose someone else. A poor sempstress was not what Ulwing the builder wanted. He wanted the daughter of Ulrich Jörg. She was all right. She was rich. It lasted a short time. Christina Jörg died. But even then he was not allowed to think of another woman, a new life. “The children!” his father said, and he resigned himself because Christopher Ulwing was the stronger and could hold his own more vehemently. Unwonted defiance mounted into his head. For a moment he rose as if to accuse, his jaw turned slightly sideways.

The old man saw his own image in him. He looked intently as if he wanted to fix forever that beam of energy now flashing up in his son’s eye. He had often longed for it vainly, and now it had come unexpectedly, produced by causes he could not understand.

But slowly it all died away in John Hubert’s eyes. Christopher Ulwing bowed his head.

“Go,” he said harshly, “now I am really tired.” In that moment he looked like a weary old woodcutter. His eyelids fell, his big bony hands hung heavily out of his sleeves.

A door closed quietly in the corridor with a spasmodic creaking. Ulwing the builder would have liked it better if it had been slammed. But his son shut every door so carefully. He could not say why. “What is going to happen when I don’t stand by his side?” he shuddered. His vitality was so inexhaustible that the idea of death always struck him as something strange, antagonistic. “What is going to happen?” The question died away, he gave it no further thought. He stepped towards the next room ... his grandchildren! They would continue what the great carpenter began. They would be strong. He opened the door. He crossed the dining room. He smelt apples and bread in the dark. One more room, and beyond that the children.

The air was warm. A night-light burned on the top of a chest of drawers. Miss Tini had fallen asleep sitting beside it with her shabby prayer book on her knees. The shadow of her nightcap rose like a black trowel on the wall. In the deep recess of the earthen-ware stove water was warming in a blue jug. From the little beds the soft breathing of children was audible.

Ulwing leaned carefully over one of the beds. The boy slept there. His small body was curled up under the blankets as if seeking shelter in his sleep from something that came with night and prowled around his bed.

The old man bent over him and kissed his forehead. The boy moaned, stared for a second, frightened, into the air, then hid trembling in his pillows.

Mamsell Tini woke, but dared not move. The master builder stood so humbly before the child, that it did not become a salaried person to see such a thing. She turned her head away and listened thus to her master’s voice.

“I didn’t mean to. Now, don’t be afraid, little Christopher. It is I.”

The child was already asleep.

Ulwing the builder stepped to the other bed. He kissed Anne too. The little girl was not startled. Her fair hair, like a silver spray, moved around her head on the pillow. She thrust her tiny arms round her grandfather’s neck and returned his kiss.

When, on the tips of his toes, Christopher Ulwing left the room, Miss Tini looked after him. She thought that, after all, the Ulwings were kindly people.

2

A glaring white light streamed through the windows into the room. Winter had come over the world during the night and the children put their heads together to discuss it. They had forgotten since last year what winter was like.

Below, the great green water crawled cold between its white banks. The castle hill opposite was white too. The top of the bastions, the ridges of the roofs, the spires of the steeples, everything that was usually sharp and pointed was now rounded and blunted by the snow.

The church tower of Our Lady belonged to Anne. The Garrison Church was little Christopher’s. A long time had passed since the children had divided these from their windows, and, because Christopher grew peevish, Anne had also given him the shingled roof of the Town Hall of Buda and the observatory on Mount St. Gellert. She only kept the Jesuits’ Stairs to herself.

“And I’ll tell on you, how you spat into the clerk’s tumbler. No, no, I won’t give it!” Anne shook her head so emphatically that her fair hair got all tangled in front of her eyes. She would not have given the Jesuits’ Stairs for anything in the world. That was the way up to the castle, to Uncle Sebastian. And she often looked over to him from the nursery window. In the morning, when she woke, she waved both hands towards the other shore. In the evening she put a tallow candle on the window-sill to let Uncle Sebastian see that she was thinking of him.

Then Sebastian Ulwing would answer from the other shore. He lit a small heap of straw on the castle wall and through the intense darkness the tiny flames wished each other good night above the Danube.

“The Jesuits’ Stairs are mine,” said Anne resolutely and went into the other room.

The little boy sulked for some time and then followed her on tiptoe. In the doorway he looked round anxiously. He was afraid of this room though it was brighter than any other and Anne called it the sunshine room. The yellow-checked wall paper looked sparkling and even on a cloudy day the cherry-wood furniture looked as if the sun shone on it. The chairs’ legs stood stiffly on the floor of scrubbed boards and their backs were like lyres. That room was mother’s. She did not live in it because she had gone to heaven and had not yet returned home, but everything was left as it had been when she went away. Her portrait hung above the flowered couch, her sewing-machine stood in the recess near the window. The piano had been hers too and the children were forbidden to touch it. Yet, Christopher was quite sure that it was full of piano-mice, who at night, when everybody is asleep, run about in silver shoes and then the air rings with their patter.

“Let us go from here,” he said trembling, “but you go first.”

There was nobody in grandfather’s room. Only some crackling from the stove. Only the ticking of the marble clock on the writing table.

Suddenly little Christopher became braver. He ran to the stove. The stove was a solid silver-grey earthenware column. On its top there was an urn emitting white china flames, rigid white china flames. This was beautiful and incomprehensible and Christopher liked to look at them.

He pointed to the brass door. Through the ventilators one could see what was going on inside the stove.

“Now the stove fairies are dancing in there!”

In vain Anne looked through the holes; she could not see any fairies. Ordinary flames were bobbing up above the cinders. The smoke slowly twisted itself up into the chimney.

“Aren’t they lovely? They have red dresses and sing,” said the boy. The little girl turned away bored.

“I only hear the ticking of the clock.” Suddenly she stood on tiptoe. When she did so, the corners of her eyes and of her mouth rose slightly. She too wanted to invent something curious:

“Tick-tack.... A little dwarf hobbles in the room. Do you hear? Tick-tack....”

Christopher’s eyes shone with delight.

“I do hear.... And the dwarf never stops, does he?”

“Never,” said Anne convincingly, though she was not quite sure herself, “he never stops, but we must not talk about it to the grown-ups.”

Christopher repeated religiously:

“The grown-ups must never know. And this is truly true, isn’t it? Grandpa has said it too, hasn’t he?”

Anne remembered that grandpa never told stories about dwarfs and fairies.

“Yes, Grandpa has said it,” the boy confirmed himself.

The whole thing got mixed up in Anne’s brain. And from that moment both believed absolutely that their grandfather had said it and that it was really a dwarf who walked in the room, hobbling with small steps, without ever stopping. Tick-tack....

“Do you hear it?”

The peaceful silence of the corridor echoed the ticking of the clock. It could even be heard on the staircase which sank like a cave from the corridor to the hall. And then the dwarf vanished out of the children’s heads.

The back garden was white and the roof looked like a hillside covered with snow. Where the dragon-headed gargoyle protruded, the house turned sharply and its inner wing extended into the deep back garden. Mr. Augustus Füger lived there with his wife and his son Otto.

Mrs. Augustus Füger, Henrietta, was for ever sitting in the window and sewing. At this very moment, her big bonnet was visible, looking like a white cat on the window sill. Fortunately, she did not look out of the window. The garden belonged entirely to the children. Theirs was the winged pump of the well, theirs the circular seat round the apple tree. Their kingdom.... In winter the garden seemed small, but in summer when the trees were covered with leaves and the lilac-bushes hid the secret places, it became enormous. Through its high wall a gate led to the world’s end; a grilled gate which grown-ups alone were privileged to open.

Sometimes Anne and Christopher would peep longingly for hours through its rails. They could see the roof of the tool-shed, the tar boiler and a motley of pieces of timber, beams, floorings, piles. What lovely slides they would have made if only one could have got at them! The old folks called this glorious, disorderly place, where rude big men in leather aprons used to work, the timber yard. The children did not approve of this name, they preferred “world’s end.” They liked it on a summer Sunday best when all was quiet and the smell of the heated timber penetrated the courtyard and even the house. Then one could believe in the secret known to Christopher. It was not a timber yard at all. The grown-ups had no business with it. It was beyond all manner of doubt the playground of giant children who had strewn it with their building bricks.

“And when I sleep, they play with them,” the boy whispered.

“One can’t believe that just now,” Anne answered seriously, “when everything is so clear.”

Crestfallen, Christopher walked behind her in the snow. They only stopped under the porch in front of a door bearing a board with the inscription “Canzelei.”[A] This word sounded like a sneeze. It tickled the children’s lips. It made them laugh.

Anne and Christopher knocked their shoulders together.

“Canzelei.... Canzelei!”

The door opened. The clerk appeared on the threshold. He was a thin little man with a starved expression, wearing a long alpaca frock-coat; when he walked, his knees knocked together. Anne knew something about him. Grandpa had said it when he was in a temper: Feuerlein was stupid! The only one among grown-ups of whom one knew such a thing beyond doubt.

The children looked at each other and their small cheeks swelled with suppressed laughter; then, like snakes, they slid through the open door into the office.

“He is stupid, though he is grown up,” Anne whispered into the boy’s ear.

“And I will spit into his tumbler!” Now they laughed freely, triumphantly.

Their laughter suddenly stopped.

Mr. Gemming, the draughtsman, had banged his triangular ruler down and began to growl. Augustus Füger tugged the sleeve-protector he wore on his right arm during business hours.

“Don’t grumble, Gemming. Don’t forget that one day he will be head of the firm, won’t you, little Christopher? And you will sit in there behind the great writing table?”

Christopher looked fearfully towards the door that led to his grandfather’s office. In there? Always? Quiet and serious—even when he wanted to play with his tin soldiers? With a shudder, he rushed across the room. No, he would rather not set his foot here again; nasty place that smelt of ink.

The door from which he had fled opened. Ulwing the builder showed a strange gentleman through the room.

The little book-keeper began to write suddenly. Gemming dipped his pencil into the inkstand. In the neighbouring room the pens scratched and the children shrank to the wall. The strange gentleman stopped. Anne saw his face clearly; it was fat and pale. Under his heavy double chin the sail-like collar looked crushed.

“Thank you,” said the strange gentleman and cast his eyes down as if he were ashamed of something. He held out a flabby white hand to Christopher Ulwing. The hand trembled. His lips quivered too.

“Don’t mention it, Mr. Münster. It is just business....”

This was said by the builder under the porch, and they heard it in the office.

Gemming began to shake the point of the pencil he had dipped in the ink. Füger blinked and blinked. Both felt that Martin George Münster had fallen from his greatness to their own level. He too was in Ulwing’s service.

When the builder returned, his crooked chin settled snugly in his open collar.

Suddenly he perceived the children.

“What are you doing here?” He would have liked to sit down with them on the heap of office books. Just for a minute, just long enough to let their hands stroke his face. He took his repeater out of his pocket.

“It can’t be done.” He still had to settle with many people. Contractors, timber merchants, masons, carters—they were all waiting behind the grating, in the big room opening into the garden. And John Hubert had already twice thrust his head through the door as if he wanted to call him. He went on. But on the threshold he had to turn back. “This afternoon we will go to Uncle Sebastian. We will take leave of him before the floating bridge is removed.”

The children grinned with delight.

“We shall go in a coach, shan’t we?” asked the boy.

“We shall walk,” answered Ulwing drily; “the horses are needed to cart wood!” And with that he slammed the door behind him.

“Walk,” repeated Christopher, disappointed. “I don’t like it. And I won’t go. And I have a pain in my foot.”

He walked lamely, rubbing his shoulders against the wall. He moaned pitiably. But Anne knew all the while that he was shamming.

CHAPTER II

The old man and the little girl walked slowly down to the banks of the river. The little squares of the windows and the two figures under the porch gazed for a long time after them. A cold snowy wind was blowing from the white hills. Water mills floated on the Danube. Horses, harnessed one in front of the other, dragged a barge at the foot of the castle hill, and small dark skiffs moved to and fro in the stream, as if Pest and Buda were taking leave of each other before the advent of winter.

On the shore shipwrights were at work. When they perceived Christopher Ulwing, they stopped and greeted him respectfully. A gentleman came in the opposite direction; he too doffed his hat. Near the market place ladies and gentlemen were walking. Everybody saluted Ulwing the builder.

Anne was proud. Her face flushed.

“Everybody salutes us, don’t they? Are there many people living here?”

“Many,” said her grandfather, and thought of something else.

“How many?”

“We can’t know that; the gentry won’t submit to a census.”

“And are there many children here?”

The builder did not answer.

“Say, Grandpa, you never were a child, were you?”

“I was, but not here.”

“Were you not always in our house, Grandpa?” asked the child, indefatigable.

Ulwing smiled.

“We came from a great distance, far, far away, Uncle Sebastian and I. By coach, as long as our money lasted, then on foot. In those days the summers were warmer than they are now. At night we wandered by moonlight....”

He relapsed into silence. His mind looked elsewhere than his eyes. The fortress of Pest! Then the bastions and walls of Pest were still standing. And he entered the city through one of its old gates.

“It was in the morning and the church bells were ringing,” he said deep in thought.

Suddenly it seemed to him that he saw the town of times gone by, not as a reality, but as an old, old fading picture. White bewigged citizens in three-cornered hats were walking the streets. Carts suspended on chains. Soldiers in high shakos. And how young and free the Danube was! Its waters shone more brightly and its shore swarmed with ship-folk. Brother Sebastian went down to the bank. He himself stopped and looked at a gaudy, pretty barge, into which men were carrying bags across two boards. They went on one, returned by the other. A clerk was standing on the shore, counting tallies on a piece of wood for every bag. The half-naked dockers shone with sweat. They carried their loads on their shoulders just as their fore-fathers had carried them here on the Danube for hundreds of years. The boards bent and swayed under their weight. The clerk swore. “There are too few men.” He looked invitingly at Christopher Ulwing. But Christopher did not touch the bags. His attention was attracted by something in the sand which entered his eyes like a pinprick, the glittering blade of an axe. He remembered clearly every word he said. “Knock those two boards together. In an hour we can slide the whole cargo into the barge.”

Down at the shore, brother Sebastian jumped into a boat. He pointed with his staff towards Buda. He called his brother, waving his hand.

“I remain here,” was the determined answer, and he picked the axe up from the sand.

The clerk watched him carefully and nodded approvingly. A few minutes later, the bags slid speedily down the improvised slide, and the barge, like a greedy monster, gulped them up into its maw.

The boat and brother Sebastian left the shore. They were already in the middle of the Danube. The stream and the oars, chance and will, carried his life into the opposite town. Christopher Ulwing remained in Pest. Next day, he worked in the office of the ship-broker. Then he went into the timber yard. Then further. Advancing. Rising. And the town grew with him as if their fate had been one.

Vainly did Anne ask a thousand little questions; her grandfather did not answer. He walked far behind his present self.

They reached the boat-bridge. Here too the men saluted. The collector asked for no toll. At the bridge-head, the sentry presented arms.

“Why?” Anne had asked this question every time she had crossed the bridge in her short life.

“They know me,” the builder answered simply.

What need was there for the children to know that he owned the bridge, had contracted for the right of way over the river; that the many rafts floating down the Danube were his as well as the land above them on the banks.

The bridge trembled rhythmically. The stream rocked the boats. It foamed, splashed, as if thirsty giant animals were lapping at the hulls of the many chained little boats. Lamps stood near the pillars. In the middle, a coloured spot above the water: the guardian saint of the river, the carved image of St. John Nepomuk. Beneath it, people passed to and fro, raising their hats.

Anne pointed to the saint: “People salute him too, even more than Grandpa.” And she was a little envious.

When they reached the castle on the hill, the little girl began to complain: “I am hungry.”

The stones of the narrow, snow-covered pavement clattered quietly under the builder’s long, firm steps.

Around them decaying houses. Yellow, grey, green. Gilt “bretzels,” giant keys, boots and horse-shoes dangled into the street from over the tiny shops, suspended from brackets which were ornamented with spirals of forged steel.

Above the shop of Uncle Sebastian, a big watch was hung. From far away Anne recognised the immobile golden hands on its face. The tower of Our Lady’s Church cast its shadow just up to it. It pointed into the street like a black signpost. The house itself was probably older than the others. Its upper storey protruded above the ground floor and was supported by several beams above the pavement. On the bare wall, just behind the clock-sign, an inscription, with curious flourishes, was visible:

Sebastian Ulwing

CITY CLOCKMAKER

The shop was crowded. Neighbours, burghers from the castle, came here every afternoon to warm themselves. Uncle Sebastian sat before his little clockmaker’s table. He was silent. His white hair, smoothed back from his forehead, fell on the collar of his violet tail-coat. His figure was tall and bent. According to old fashion he wore knee-breeches. On his heavy shoes the buckles were a little rusty; the thick white stockings formed creases. When he perceived Anne, he began to laugh. He caught her up in his arms and raised her high into the air.

“Where is little Christopher?”

“He has a pain in his foot,” said the master builder, bowing to the company. Anne turned up her nose significantly. The children did not think Uncle Sebastian belonged quite among the grown-ups. He understood many things grandfather could not grasp. They put their heads together, secretively, affectionately. Anne began to dangle her little legs in the air and ask for gingerbread. Then she proceeded to investigate the shop.

At the bottom of it a semi-circular window opened on a courtyard. A deep leather armchair and a long table with curved legs stood in front of the window. The table was covered with a lot of old rubbish. The shelves too were laden with odds and ends. Watches and clocks covered the grimy walls.

Near the table, a lady tried to sell a repoussé, silver, dove-shaped loving-cup. Perceiving Christopher Ulwing, she curtseyed deeply.

“With your permission, I am Amalia Csik, from the Fisherman’s bastion.”

She wore a hat like a hamper. Everything on her was faded and shabby. Anne noticed that whenever she moved a musty odour spread from her clothes. In the shop nobody took any notice of this. All these people were dressed differently from her grandfather.

“Even the little children are dressed in a modish way,” the lady said disparagingly. “Of course, everything in Pest is different from what we have in Buda.... We, here in the castle, are faithful to our own ways, thank God. Are we not, your reverence?”

The castle chaplain nodded several times his yellow, bird-like head.

“I hear,” said the lady, “that they have started a fashion paper in Pest.”

“Yes, and they print it in the same type as the prayer books,” grumbled the chaplain.

The lady gave a deep sigh.

“Notwithstanding that the devil himself is the editor of fashion papers.”

“Of all newspapers,” said the official censor of the Governor’s council from beside the stove.

Christopher Ulwing raised one eyebrow in sign of derision. “Is it the censor who says that?”

“It is I,” came the answer, emphatically, as if an incontrovertible argument had been thrust into the discussion.

“Literary people in Pest have a different opinion,” grumbled the builder.

“Perhaps it would be better not to drag them in. As censor, I am a literary man myself....”

The builder was getting more and more impatient. The censor turned to the chaplain.

“The written word must not serve the ideals of the individual but the purposes of the State and Church.”

Christopher Ulwing went to the door. He would have liked to let a little fresh air into the place. Suddenly he turned back angrily: “I suppose, gentlemen, you only approve of mediocrity?”

“Well said, Mr. Builder. Nothing but the mediocre is useful to the organization of the State. That which is above or below only causes uncomfortable disorder.”

He did not himself know why, but, all of a sudden, Christopher’s thoughts went to the bookshop of Ulrich Jörg in Pest. He remembered the young authors who frequented it; their plans, their manuscripts, detained in the censor’s sieve. All those ambitious hopes, new dreams and awakening thoughts, younger than he, a little beyond his ken, but which he loved as he loved his grandchildren.

He turned his back furiously on the censor and went to the bottom of the room feeling that if he spoke he would say something rude.

The chaplain said with indignation:

“All those people from Pest are such rebels!”

The lady exclaimed suddenly: “There comes the wife of the Councillor of the Governor’s council! She is wearing her silver-wedding hat!”

All thronged to the door. The shop became quite dark as the fat “Mrs. Councillor” passed in front of it. The chaplain and the others took their hats and followed her; let the people think they were in her company. Quite a crowd for Buda, at least six people went down Tárnok Street at the same time. Even the good lady with the big hat remembered some urgent business. She quickly concluded the sale of the loving-cup, bowed, and rushed after the others.

Christopher Ulwing came forward.

“What a bureaucratic air there is in Buda. I prefer your friends who come after closing hours: the lame wood-carver and the old spectacle-maker. Even if they do not carry the world forward, they don’t attempt to push it back.”

Sebastian laughed good-naturedly:

“These too are good people, only different from you on the other side of the river. We have time, you are in a hurry. You are for ever wanting new-fashioned things. Somebody who reads newspapers told the chaplain that your son spoke at the Town Hall. Now you want avenues, lamps, brick-built houses.... What are we coming to?”

The builder looked deeply and calmly into his brother’s eyes.

“Brother Sebastian, we have to change or time will beat us.”

The clockmaker became embarrassed.

“Ah, but old things, old ways are so pleasant.”

Christopher Ulwing pointed to the loving-cup.

“This too is old, but this has a right to remain because it is beautiful. Do you remember, our father too made some like this. The time may come when you will get a lot of money for it. I should like to buy it myself.”

Sebastian looked anxiously at his brother.

“Perhaps you won’t sell this either.” The builder again became impatient. “You buy to do business, but when it comes to selling....”

The clockmaker took the dove-shaped cup into his hand. He held it gently, tenderly, as if it were a live bird. Then he shook his head.

“No, not yet. I will sell it another day.”

“Why not now?”

“Because I want to look at it for some time,” said Sebastian gently, as if he were ashamed of himself.

“That’s the way to remain poor. To keep everything that is old, avoid everything that is new. Do you know, Brother Sebastian, you are just the same as Buda....”

“And you are just like Pest,” retorted Sebastian modestly.

They smiled at each other quietly.

Anne meanwhile was playing at the tool table and dropping wheels and watch-springs into the oil bottle.

Uncle Sebastian did not want to spoil her pleasure but watched every movement of hers anxiously. When the child noticed that she was observed, she withdrew her hand suddenly. She stared innocently at the walls.

“I am bored,” she said sadly, “I don’t know what to do. Do tell me a story.”

“I don’t know any to-day,” said Uncle Sebastian.

“You always know some for you read such a lot....” While saying this she drew from the pocket of Uncle Sebastian’s coat a well-worn little green book.

“Demokritos, or the posthumous writings of a laughing philosopher.” This was Sebastian Ulwing’s favorite book.

“Here you are!” cried Anne, waving her prey triumphantly. “Now come along, tell me a story.”

The clockmaker shook his head. It still weighed on his mind that he and the builder could never understand each other. He was proud of his brother. He felt his will, his strength, but that was wellnigh all he knew about him. Had he rejoiced, had he suffered in life? Had he ever loved, or did he have no love for anybody?... He thought of Barbara, his brother’s dead wife, whom Brother Christopher had snatched from him and taken to the altar, because he did not know that he, Sebastian, had loved her silently for a long time. His forehead went up in many wrinkles.... We human beings trample our fellow creatures under our feet because we don’t know them.

Anne took his hand and wrung it slowly. “Do tell me a story, do!”

Inside, in front of the courtyard window, the builder turned the pages of an old book.

Uncle Sebastian sat down and lifted Anne into his lap. Casting occasional glances on his brother’s face, as if he were reading in it, he began to tell his story.

“It happened a long, long time ago, even before I was born, in the time of the Turkish Pasha’s rule. A gay city it was then, was Buda. In every street shops dealing in masks and fancy dresses were opened. When Carnival time came, folk used to walk a-singing in the streets of the castle; old ones, young ones, in gaudy fancy dress, with little iron lamps—such a crazy procession! The fun only stopped at the dawn of Ash-Wednesday. All fancy dress shops were closed and bolted. All were locked, except one in Fortune’s Street which remained open even after Ash-Wednesday—all the year round.

“Singly, secretly, people went to visit it, at night, when the castle gates had been closed and the fires at the street corners put out. Among the buyers were some that had haughty faces. These bought themselves humble-looking masks. The cruel men bought kind ones, godless men pious ones, the stupid clever ones, the clever simple ones. But the greatest number were those who suffered and they bought masks which showed a laughing face. That is what happened. It is a true story,” growled Uncle Sebastian, “and it is just as true that those who once put a mask on never took it off again. Only on rare occasions did it fall off their faces, on dark nights when they were quite alone, or when they loved, or when they saw money....”

Again he looked at his brother’s face and then continued in a whisper:

“The business flourished. Kings, princes, beautiful princesses, priests, soldiers, burghers, everybody, even the Town Councillors, went to the shop. Its reputation had even spread down to the lower town. People from the other side of the Danube came too. After a time, the whole world wore masks. Nobody talked about it but all wore them and the people forgot each other’s real faces. Nobody knows them any more. Nobody....”

Uncle Sebastian didn’t tell any more and in the great silence the ticking of the clocks became loud.

“I didn’t like that story,” said Anne, “tell me about naughty children and fairies. That’s prettier....”

The clockmaker probably did not hear the child’s voice. He sat in his low chair as if listening for someone’s steps, the steps of one who had passed away. He thought of his tale, of his brother, of Barbara, of himself.

The builder closed the book. He got up.

“Let us go. It is late.”

And the two Ulwings took leave of each other for the winter.

On the bridge over the Danube the sixteen lamps were already alight. Their light dropped at equal distances into the river. The water played for a time with the beams, then left them behind. It continued its way in darkness towards the rock of St. Gellert’s Mount. Only the chill of its big wet mass was perceptible in the night.

The snow began to fall anew. A light flared up here and there in the window of a house near the shore. The sound of horns was audible on the Danube.

On the bridge, Anne suddenly perceived her father. Young Ulwing walked under the lamps with a girl. They were close together. When they saw the builder and the child they separated rapidly and the girl ran in haste to the other side of the bridge.

Christopher Ulwing called his son.

Leaning against the railing, John Hubert waited for them; he was for ever leaning on something. When they reached him, he took hold of the little girl’s free hand as if he wanted to put her between himself and his father.

Anne was afraid. She felt that something was going on in the silence over her head. She drew her shoulders up. The two men did not speak for a long time to each other. They walked with unequal, apparently antagonistic steps and dragged the trembling child between them.

It was Christopher Ulwing who broke the silence. He shouted angrily:

“You promised not to go to her while I was alive! Can’t I even trust your word?”

“But, sir, don’t forget the child is here!”

“She won’t understand,” retorted the builder sharply.

Anne understood the words quite clearly, but what she heard did not interest her. Her thoughts were otherwise engaged. She felt keenly that two hands opposed to each other were pressing her on either side and that some community of feeling had arisen between her father and herself. They both feared someone who was stronger than they.

“I went to meet you, sir,” grumbled John Hubert, “and met her by chance on the bridge.”

Christopher Ulwing stopped dead.

“Is that the truth?”

“I never told lies.” Young Ulwing’s voice was honest and sad. It sounded as if he laid great weight on what he said because it had cost him so dear.

The builder, still angry, drew out his snuff box. He tapped it sharply and opened it.

For ever so long there had lived in this box a quaint old tune. It woke at the blow and the snuff box began to play.

“Confound it,” exclaimed Christopher Ulwing, and tapped it again to silence it, but the box continued to play.

The two men, as though they had been interrupted by a comic interlude, stopped talking. The builder returned the box into his pocket. Anne bent her head close to her grandfather’s coat. There was now a sound in it as if a band of little Christopher’s tin soldiers were playing prettily, delicately, far, far away.

Florian was waiting with a lantern at the bridgehead on the Pest side. Many small lamps moved through the silence. Snow fell in the dark streets.

But now Anne was leaning her tired head fully on her grandfather’s pocket. “More!” she said gently over and over again and inhaled the music of the snuff box just as Mamsell Tini breathed in the lavender perfume from her prayer book.

CHAPTER III

Winter came many times. Summer came many times. The children did not count them. Meanwhile an iron chain bridge had grown together from the two banks of the Danube. Even when the ice was drifting it was not taken to pieces; it was beautiful and remained there all the year. The Town Council had planted rows of trees along the streets. Oil lamps burnt in the streets at nightfall and the Ulwing house no longer stood alone on the shore. The value of the ground owned by the great carpenter had soared. Walls grew up from the sand. Streets started on the waste land, stopped, went on again. Work, life, houses, brick-built houses, everywhere.

Everything changed; only Ulwing the builder remained the same. His clever eyes remained sharp and clear. He walked erect on the scaffoldings, in the office, in the timber yard. He was a head taller than anybody else. They feared him at the Town Hall and the contractors hated him. He quietly went on buying and building and gradually the belief became a common superstition that everything the great carpenter touched turned into gold.

Indoors, in the quiet safe well-being of the house, the marble clock continued to tick monotonously, but the children had long ago lost the belief that it was a lame dwarf who hobbled through the rooms. For a long time Christopher had even realized that there were no fairies. His grandfather had told him so. He shouted at him and took him by the shoulders:

“Do you hear, little one, there are no fairies to help us. Only weaklings expect miracles, the strong perform miracles.”

Little Christopher often remembered his grandfather killing his fairies. What a terrible, superior being he seemed to be! He felt like crying; if there were no fairies, he wondered, what filled the darkness, the water of the well, the flames? What lived in them? And while he searched in bewilderment his eyes seemed to snatch for support like the hands of a drowning man.

He grew resigned, however, and called the “world’s end” the timber yard, just like any grown-up. Under his rarely moving eyelids his pale eyes would look indifferently into the air. Only his voice showed signs of disillusion whenever he imitated his seniors and spoke in their language of doings once dear to him.

The years passed by and the magic cave under the wall of the courtyard became a ditch, the terrifying iron gate an attic door and the stove fairies ordinary flames. The piano mice too came to an end. When a string cracked now and then in the house, Christopher opened his eyes widely and stared into the darkness which had become void to him.

“Anne, are you asleep?”

“Yes, long ago.”

“I had such a funny dream ... of a girl. She raised her arms and leaned back.”

“Go to sleep.”

Before Christopher’s eyes the darkness (forsaken by dwarfs and fairies since he had given up believing in them) became incomprehensibly populated. He saw the girl of whom he had dreamt, her face, her body too. She was tall and slender, her bosom rigid, she lifted both her arms and twisted her hair like a black mane round her head. Just like the sister of Gabriel Hosszu before the looking-glass when he peeped at her last Sunday through the keyhole.

“Anne....”

The boy listened with his mouth open. Everything was silent in the house. Suddenly he pulled the blanket over his head. He began to tell stories to himself. He told how the King wore a golden crown and lived up on the hill in a white castle. It was never dark in the castle, tallow candles burnt all the night. His bed was guarded by slaves, slaves did his lessons for him, slaves brought a dark-eyed princess to him. Chains rattled on the princess. “Take them off!” he commanded. “You are free.” The princess knelt down at his feet and asked what she should give him for his pardon. “Take your hair down and twist it up again,” he said, said it quite simply and smiled. And the princess took her hair down many times and many times twisted it up again.... He fell asleep and still he smiled.