A World to Win

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWODuring the time we stayed in one place, the Enemy’s lively good humour persisted, so I grasped my opportunities and unashamedly picked their brains about the family. I confirmed that they were somewhat in awe of both parents, that they liked living in Vienna and Buda-Pest, but liked best to be at Szelényi Castle in Transylvania, with Grandpere.

“So you get on well with your grandfather?” I enquired, carefully neutral.

“Oh yes,” said Anna. “He’s quite fierce, but he likes us.”

“I hope he does. Who else lives in the castle?”

“Aunt Katalin,” said Anna, “and Uncle Mattias — but sometimes they live in Pest too. Like Aunt Maria.”

“Don’t forget Aunt Margit,” Miklós added, and they giggled — at Aunt Margit, I inferred. Further digging elicited the information that Aunt Margit was dotty, but that this was all right because she was only Papa’s half-sister.

I looked forward to Aunt Margit.

While in Vienna I saw as little of the Count and Countess as I had on the journey. The Count was busy on important Court business — he was the Emperor’s best friend according to Anna — and the Countess was equally busy on no business at all. She only once found the time to spend an afternoon with her children, and that turned out to be momentous in many ways. It cast the Enemy into raptures, causing them to ignore their paid governess; it opened their governess’s eyes to the precise depth of their worship of their beautiful mother — as well as to the illogic of petty jealousy in lonely spinsters; most of all, it gave me a few precious hours of freedom.

It was not exactly a gracious proposal on the Countess’s part. Glancing back at me over her shoulder, a child clinging to either elegant sleeve, she said carelessly, “Do you want the afternoon off? You look as if you need it.”

Needed or not, I jumped at it as my one chance to see Vienna unencumbered by my small enemies. Pausing only long enough to check my state of health in the mirror — I was in fact less pale than a week ago — I grabbed my old bonnet and sallied forth into the city.

I had a truly wonderful afternoon, for Vienna is one of the most relaxed and friendly cities in the world. Even the street corner loafers are decidedly unthreatening. Greatly daring, I spent part of my generously advanced salary on a new bonnet, which I wore at once — it was a rather frivolous affair of straw and green ribbons, not quite suitable to my position — and then wandered happily through narrow streets and grand avenues, watching the people and browsing in dark little book shops. I treated myself to The Count of Monte Cristo, which I had heard to be a rattling good yarn, and was just contemplating beginning it over a cup of delicious Viennese coffee, when the most momentous event of the afternoon occurred.

I was just walking, enjoying the people and the sunshine and my own anonymity, and reflecting on the good fortune that had brought me here. Then, as I rounded the next corner, I was pulled up short by the sight of a large gathering of people directly in front of me; I had been so lost in reverie that I had not been remotely aware of the low murmur of the crowd or even the loud, passionate voice speaking over it.

Intrigued, I moved closer. I could see a young man on some sort of platform haranguing the attentive crowd with much gesticulation. He looked like a student. Those I could see of the audience seemed to be mostly poor working people, factory hands and shop workers or the unemployed, with a scattering of the more respectable who might have been clerks or teachers.

Though I could not make out what the young man was saying, I had a distinct feeling that it didn’t much matter since such large gatherings were illegal in Austria for any purpose. Nervously, I contemplated skirting the crowd and going on my way, but curiosity was ever my downfall.

I paused at the edge of the mob, straining my ears and craning my neck to see better, both in vain. The girl beside me — she was little more than a child and might have been a seamstress or a shop girl — shifted her position and bumped into me. She apologised at once, so timidly that I smiled reassuringly and took the opportunity to ask, “What is going on here?”

“The young man is making a speech,” she answered helpfully.

“What about?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I can’t hear.”

“We could move nearer,” I suggested.

“It’s better to stay on the edge of the crowd,” she said with devastating simplicity, “in case the soldiers come.”

I looked around me uneasily — I had a respectable position to keep after all — but this was my sole afternoon of freedom, of exploration and adventure. Prudence never really had a chance.

“Well, if I’m to be arrested,” I said drily, “I’d rather know why,” and began to ease my way through the throng towards the speaker. The crowd parted for me easily enough, even when I came right to the front, for there are few people who cannot see over my head.

“Heavens,” breathed an awed voice in my ear, and I realized the timid girl had followed me after all.

The speaker was standing on a large, old wooden table which looked as if it had been carried out from the coffee-house across the road. My German was not yet good enough to understand all he was saying, but it was definitely a political speech, and a disgruntled one at that. I sighed, rather disappointed, and examined his face and dress instead: both were pleasing if unremarkable.

Much more remarkable, I found, was the other young man sitting on the edge of the table, idly swinging one leg. He was shabbily dressed and rough looking, with dark blond hair too long to be tidy and skin well browned by the sun. A working man, I guessed, with political aspirations.

“Do you know him?” my new acquaintance whispered, seeing the direction of my gaze.

I shook my head and whispered back, “Do you?”

“No, but I know who he is. That’s Lajos Lázár.”

I looked at her blankly.

“The radical,” she said, amazed by my ignorance. “He writes articles in the liberal newspapers and he’s a lawyer for poor people.”

I blinked in some surprise and re-examined the subject in question.

“He doesn’t look like any of the lawyers I’ve ever met,” I said dubiously. He looked, in fact, inherently disreputable: young, lean and hungry.

“He defended my neighbour’s son,” the girl said simply.

I doubted he would be an asset to a man in the dock, but I kept my opinion tactfully to myself. By this time, I could see that one or two people were becoming decidedly irritated by our constant whispering — one huge man in a dirty black cap was glaring at me quite fiercely. However, my informant was not to be stopped there.

“And he’s the one who got Ehlberg released.”

I was obviously meant to know who Ehlberg was, and after a blank moment I did remember over-hearing the name in several whispered conversations during the last week. I gathered he was some sort of political prisoner who had just been released, to the joy of a few and the amazement of many.

By the time I had registered the implications of that, my companion was musing a little wistfully on her hero. “He’s got such an attractive face, hasn’t he?”

“It’s an interesting face,” I allowed. He had a wide, mobile mouth and prominent cheekbones, and etched around his eyes and forehead were surprisingly deep, weary lines. “Is he a friend of the speaker?”

“Probably. He might even speak himself!”

She seemed quite excited by this. I, however, felt a stab of unease. I really was in rather unsavoury company, I suspected. To confirm it, I turned my attention back to the speaker, and listened with some disfavour as he did his best to stir up men and women who would suffer far more than he for any crime he incited them to commit.

I disapproved of rabble-rousing. Once, with my father, I witnessed a “small” hunger demonstration in Glasgow: I saw the ugliness, the desperation of the mob, and I saw the callous brutality with which it was squashed. I had no desire to see it again, anywhere.

I had already turned to my companion, ready to bid her a brief good-bye, when that odd instinct that tells us we are under observation made me look beyond her, straight into the eyes of the radical lawyer sitting on the table.

He showed no signs of embarrassment at being caught so vulgarly staring. Instead, he smiled, a slightly upward quirk of the lips.

I didn’t know whether to be outraged or simply to smile back. As a respectable lady, the former would have been wiser, but he had one of those vital, arresting faces that somehow compels collusion.

However, before I could make up my mind, the speaker himself demanded his attention by flinging both arms out towards him and crying, “I give you my friend, Lázár!”

Shouts of applause greeted this. Lázár’s smile died; his eyes released mine. Casually, he swung up on to the table, coming lightly to his feet beside the student — who clapped him heartily on the back before jumping down to lean on the table, facing him.

Lázár held up his hand for silence — and received it. Beside me, my companion held her breath. Well, he was an oddly imposing figure for one so shabbily dressed.

When he spoke, his voice was almost lazy, though deep and pleasing to the ear, with an accent at once unusual and familiar to me.

“He’s Hungarian, you know,” whispered my young companion.

I nodded: Lajos is the Hungarian for Louis.

He began: “I don’t think Hermann has left me anything to say, but...”

The “but” was treated as a huge joke by the crowd, who roared their appreciation until Lázár, carelessly good-natured, again held up his hand for silence. Still half-poised for flight, like everyone else now I was quiet and waiting.

He stood at his ease on that rickety old table, much as if he was entertaining a party of friends in his own home, and began to speak easily, quietly, without any of the elaborate gesticulation or passionate outbursts indulged in by the student. Lajos Lázár did not harangue: he conversed, with friendliness and humour; he gave his opinion and answered questions that were thrown at him civilly enough but quite without awe by his avid audience.

It was this original impression of calm good sense that held me, at first from surprise and then from interest. So, though I had truly meant to leave, I didn’t. I stayed to listen and that was fatal.

Of course, I still could not understand all that he said, but I grasped that he was urging some kind of unity against the injustices of a government that left so many poor and powerless in the hands of so few.

It didn’t sound unreasonable.

I found myself straining to catch his meaning until gradually even the words themselves hardly mattered. It was the honesty, the feeling behind them that was important. And despite his deceptively casual manner, this man was deadly serious. There was anger in him, and a kind of restrained passion, and permeating everything, an air of excitement, a knowledge that soon we would be able to change things.

The emotion flowing from him began to sweep me along with it. I remembered the pinched, discontented faces of the poor that had stared at me so accusingly all across Europe, and I knew suddenly that I was wrong to bury my head in the sand. I knew that a better world had to be worth fighting for.

My breath caught in my throat. I felt uplifted, as if by a revelation.

And then I was dropped again with a bump. For, as Lázár listened to the rather unclear question of someone behind me, I saw his eyes shift suddenly beyond the crowd and stare at something in the distance, something he continued to watch as he spoke.

“I’m sorry. I’ll have to answer you a bit later. There is plenty of time, so don’t panic, but the soldiers are coming. You have to disperse now.”

In Glasgow that day, I had never imagined that I would be one of a mob run down by soldiers.

My heart was lurching unpleasantly, even though Lázár was proving his point of “plenty of time” by continuing to stand on the table with an incongruous air of leisure, while the crowd, curiously silent now, pushed and swarmed and dispersed itself with agonizing slowness.

Still half-bewildered, I looked around for my youthful companion, but she had already fled. I was sure we both regretted my boldness.

Taking a deep breath, I moved decisively onwards, mingling as sedately as I could with the other scurrying, buffeting fugitives. As I passed the ridiculous platform, I heard someone cry urgently: “Lajos, for God’s sake get down from there! You know it’s you they really want!”

Involuntarily, I glanced up towards Lázár. He had crouched down on the table to speak to the student, but over the young man’s head his eyes uncannily met mine. Again I beheld that funny, upward tug of the lips.

Someone pushed against me; I stumbled, and tore my eyes free, hurrying away with the melting crowd until I wondered where in the world I was.

It was fully half an hour before I could force my hands to unclench enough to hail a fiacre. Blindly, I stared out of the window at the passing houses, aware only of the scene I had just escaped, and of my own unforgivable reactions.

Oh, I allowed him to be convincing. I even admitted that he would be a positive asset to a defendant in court. It was just a pity he chose to waste, to abuse his undoubted talents in such a mean, unproductive way as this afternoon. Some part of me was still spellbound by his performance — no doubt the fault of my spectacles which continued to provide me with an all too fascinating, new view of the world — but the thinking part of me, the important part, angry at my common weakness, wished that I had jumped up there beside him and warned the people against him, for I knew him now to be a very dangerous man.

Regardless of rights and wrongs, I knew that if people followed him — and, God, how easy it would be! — it could only lead to violence.