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Old House

<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX</h2> The new inhabitants of the strange, small lodgings found everything hostile and bleak in their new surroundings. An open gas flame whistled in the narrow anteroom. The neglected doors were shabby and the dark rooms only remembered people who had not cared for them and were for ever moving on. The first week passed by. Anne did not leave Thomas’s bedside and still dreaded going to the window. All this time her soul lead a double life: one for Thomas, one for the house. After a sleepless night she could stand it no longer. She stole gently to the window and bent hesitatingly, fearfully, forward. She felt relieved. In the grey morning the old house still stood intact.... She noticed for the first time that its yellow walls stood further out than the other houses and that they obstructed the road. She was shocked to realize how old and big it was. Its steep, old-fashioned roof cast a deep shadow out of which the windows stared at her with the pitiful gaze of the blind. While she looked at them one by one, she never ceased listening to her patient. Suddenly it seemed to her that Thomas’s breath had become[Pg 276] weaker. She glided back trembling. Henceforth this became Anne’s only road. It was a short road but it embraced Anne’s whole life. One morning a queer noise roused her from the sleep of exhaustion. There was silence in the room, the noise came from the street. She rose from the armchair in which she spent the nights and went on tiptoe to the window. Workmen stood in front of the old house. Some men rolled tarred poles from a cart. The front door was open as if gaping for an awful shriek of agony. A gap had formed between the tiles of the attics and men walked upon the roof. Anne covered her eyes. Had she to live through this? She could not run away. She would have to see it all.... Thomas started up from a restless dream. “What is it? What is happening?” There was no word which could express what happened there, on the other side of the street, or if there was one, Anne could not find it. Without a word, she went back to the bed and drew her old sweet smile, like a veil, over her face. She was overwrought, she drew the veil too hard ... and it broke and covered her no more. Thomas reached for her hand. In that instant he realised the immensity of Anne’s sacrifice. Till now he had faith in himself and believed he could attract his wife’s soul to what he loved. Illness had wrung this hope from him[Pg 277] and he felt ashamed, his pride suffered, that he should have been the cause of Anne’s sudden sacrifice. His dying eyes looked at her earnestly, with boundless love. Anne’s back was turned to the light and while Thomas stroked her hand she spoke of Ille. She planned.... Next day the post brought a little bag. It contained wheat ... golden wheat from Ille. Thomas passed it slowly, pensively, between his fingers and while the source of life flowed in poignant contrast between his ghostly, lean hands, tears came to his eyes. In these moments, in these days, under the cover of the worn torn smile Anne’s face became old. Out there, the roof of the old house was already gone and hemmed in between scaffoldings; like a poor old prisoner, the yellow front was waiting for its fate. To Anne’s imagining the house complained behind its wooden cage and knew that it had been so surrounded only to be killed. The pickaxes set to work. The bricks slid shrieking down a slide from the first floor. Labourers, Slovak girls, came and went on the scaffolding and they too carried bricks on hods. Every passing day saw the house grow smaller. The labourers tore holes in the walls and left the rest to crumble down. That was the quickest way. [Pg 278] The dull noise went to the marrow, and with every wall something fell to pieces in Anne’s heart. It seemed to her that she became feebler after every crash, that the efforts of generations collapsed in her soul, great old efforts, with which the first Ulwings, the ancient unknown ones, had all carried bricks for the builder—bricks for the house. She thought of her father. He kept the walls standing. And of Christopher—he began to pull the building down. And now the end had come. The crevice grew alarmingly in the yellow wall. By and by the whole front became one crevice. One could look into the rooms. From the street people stared in and this affected Anne as if impertinent, inquisitive strangers spied into the past of her private life. Here and there the green wallpaper clung tenaciously to the ruins. A round black hole glared in a corner from which the stove pipes had been torn remorselessly: the tunnel of Christopher’s stove-fairies. In some places the torn up floor boards hung in the air and the dark passages of the demolished chimneys looked as if a sooty giant finger had been drawn along the wall. On the further side, the row of semi-circular windows in the corridor became visible. The trees of the back garden stretched their heads[Pg 279] and looked out into the street. Then one day they stood there no longer. When the heavy waggon drove jerkily with them through the gaping door, Anne recognized each, one by one. On the top lay a crippled trunk and the boards of the cracked, round seat spread from it in splinters. Everything went quickly now; even the two pillar-men lay on their backs on the pavement of the street. When evening came and the labourers had gone, Anne snatched a shawl and ran down the stairs. She wanted to take leave of the pillar-men. She bent down and looked into their faces. The light of the street lamp which used to shine into the green room, lit up the two stone figures. They looked as if they had died. Steps approached from the street corner. Anne withdrew into the former entrance. Two men came down the street. The elder stopped; his voice sounded clear: “Once this was the house of Ulwing the builder.” The younger, indifferent, stepped over the head of one of the stone figures. “Ulwing the builder?” Suddenly he looked interestedly at the mutilated walls. “Ulwing? ... any relation of the clockmaker of Buda?” “His brother.” [Pg 280] “I never heard that he had any family,” murmured the younger, continuing his way, “Sebastian Ulwing did great things for our country.” Anne looked after them. Was this all that remained of the Ulwing name? Was the memory of his work already gone? The heroic death of Uncle Sebastian, a doubtful legend, was that all that was remembered? Men came again. Carriages, life, the noise of the town. Anne went back, across the road, towards the strange house. That night Thomas became very restless. He tossed from one side to the other and asked several times if Anne was there. He did not see her, though she sat at the side of the bed and held his hand in hers. She held her head quite bravely, there was not a tear in her eyes. She did not want Thomas to read his death sentence from her face. In the morning Anne felt her hand tenderly pressed. “Are you here?” asked the pallid, dying man. “All the time I was waiting for you to be here.” In a few moments Thomas’s features altered amazingly. A shadow fell over them and Anne looked round vainly to find out whence it came. Yet it was there and became darker and darker in the hollow of his eyes, round his mouth. “I am going now,” said Thomas, “don’t shake your head. I know....” [Pg 281] She could not answer nor could she restrain her tears any longer. “Weep, Anne, it will do you good and forgive me if you can. I did not understand you, that is what made your life so heavy at my side.” He shut his eyes and remained a long time without moving; only his face was now and again convulsed as if something sobbed within him. Then he drew Anne’s head to his heart. “Here ... close, quite close.... This was yours, yours alone.... Anne.... Anne....” repeated his voice further and further away, “Anne....” That was the last word, as if of all the words of life it were the only one he wanted to take with him on the long, lone road. Before night came Thomas Illey was no more. That night Anne kept vigil between two dead. Her husband ... and the old house. When day broke somebody came into the room and flung his arms around her. Her son. Thomas’s son. Leaning on his arm Anne left the strange house behind Thomas’s coffin. And the younger boy, fair and blue-eyed held her hand close and clung to her. Thomas was borne away. It was his wish to be buried in Ille. Anne and the two boys went in a carriage through the town to the station. It was a warm summer night. The gas lamps were already alight. Here and there electric[Pg 282] globes hung like glowing silver-blue drops from their wires. Illuminated shops, show windows, large coffee houses with glaring windows. Servites’ Place, Grenadier’s Street ... and on what had once been the Grassalkovich corner an electric clock marked the time. The carriage turned a corner, the pavements on both sides swarmed with pushing crowds. ’Buses, carriages, the hum of voices, glaring posters, people. Many people, everywhere. Further on there was a block in the traffic. The scaffoldings of new-built houses encroached on the pavement. Damp smell of lime mixed with the summer’s dust. Under the scaffoldings hurrying figures with drawn-up shoulders. Sudden shouts. A jet of water sprayed the hot pavement in a broad sheaf. A mounted policeman lifted his white-gloved hand. For an instant everything stopped, then the crowd became untangled and rolled on like a stream. Anne’s eyes passed vaguely over the signs of the shops. She found no familiar name. The Jörgs, Münster, Walter, were nowhere. Other names, other people. And the Ulwings? A forgotten corner lamp, an old tree surviving in the row of young trees bordering the streets, a condemned, quaint old house, uncouthly timid among the powerful new buildings ... these might possibly know something of Ulwing the builder but men knew him no more. [Pg 283] The carriage reached its destination. It stopped at the railway station. In the smoky hall Florian and Mamsell Tini sat on the luggage. Somewhere a bell was rung and a voice proclaimed the names of unknown places that people went to ... lived in. Anne, standing on the platform, saw a dark van coupled to the train. They had to wait a long time ... the train started late. People came hurrying. Only he who travelled in the black van to Ille was in no hurry. The furious bell sounded again. Anne leaned out of her carriage door though she wanted to see no more; all was over for her and far, far away. Her tired aimless look was suddenly arrested. Someone came to her, came to her out of the past ... from far away. Adam Walter stopped in front of her carriage and, without a word, uncovered himself. He stood still there near the line when the train had gone. He looked long, long after the trail of smoke. The long dark night dissolved into dawn and fields and trees.... Now and then little sentry huts appeared as if something white had been flashed beside the rushing windows of the train. The barriers at the crossings were like outstretched arms. Racing telegraph poles, signal wires shining like silver. The shrubs rocked in the wind caused by[Pg 284] the train and the shadow of the smoke floated broad over the sunlit cornfields. Then all was reversed. The train stopped. People had been waiting for a long time at the small station of Ille. Blue spots, bright peasants’ petticoats, shining white chemisettes. All the round holiday hats were doffed simultaneously like a flock of black birds. Bareheaded, dumb, the people of Ille stood before the wife of Thomas Illey. Hard brown hands offered themselves and the tearful eyes looked at her as if they had always known her. “God brought you back home to us.” The deeply furrowed face of an old peasant bent over her hand. Those behind gathered round the boys. One peasant woman stroked George Illey’s arm. “Oh my sweet soul, you are just like your father.” Anne looked round bewildered. She felt some strange new emotion. The ground she stood on was the ground of Ille, the trees had grown from it, the people too, everything was part of it, her sons, Thomas’s memory.... A deep rustic voice said: “Our master has come home.” The crowd opened a way for the metal coffin, carried by four stalwart youths to a cart. They placed it on a pile of oak boughs, then all started[Pg 285] behind it. At the cross roads the cart turned towards the chapel. The carriage took the road through the row of poplars. Anne’s eyes followed the cart. The wheels were invisible under the branches hanging down from it. Rich green life carried death. The crown of the oak carried Thomas Illey towards the cemetery. The bell of the chapel called gently to heaven. The churches of the villages responded in the distance. One told the other all over the country, that the master of Ille had come home. Along both sides of the road the poplars stood erect like a guard of honour, full of old traditions. The carriage turned another corner and pebbles flew up under the wheels. There, surrounded by oaks, stood the old manor house of Ille, and in the cool white-washed hall steps resounded under the portraits of ancient lords of Ille. Anne started wearily, then suddenly stopped, deeply shocked. As though the house had been prepared for a gay festival ... it was all decked with flowers. Her eyes were hurt by the glare of the bright colours and her pent-up sorrow moaned within her. She pressed her hands to her bosom ... the flowers pained her. “Why did you do it? Why? Just now?” The old housekeeper left the row of women servants. [Pg 286] “It was the order of our good master. It was his will that every flower should be picked when our mistress came home.” In Anne’s pale, transparent face the corners of her eyes and lips rose in silent pain. It was as though she gazed into a mysterious abyss of which she had known nothing till this day. Now she saw Thomas’s soul, now that he had given her every flower that had not grown on someone else’s land. He was dead when he gave, but he gave.... If only one could answer those who are gone; if only one could speak when speech is no more possible.... Anne remained alone in a small vaulted room. Above the couch of many flowers hung the portrait of Mrs. Christina. The piano, the small work-table were there too, and everything was in the same position as it had been in the sunshine room. She leaned her brow against the window railing and from among her old household gods looked out into the new world. A verdant breath of the large garden fanned her face. The trees whispered strange things to each other. Anne thought of the swing-tree and her gaze wandered over the garden as if in search of it. Then she heard something call to her. It became clearer and clearer. Beyond the trees, there spoke with quiet distant murmur, a faithful old voice: the Danube ... the fate of the[Pg 287] Ulwings. The past spoke. This was all that was left to her; nothing more.... In that instant the tramp of strong young steps recalled her from the past. Through the glaring summer sunlight her two sons came down the gravelled path. She looked at them and her head rose. THE END <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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