[Footnote 14: Fashionable journal.]

"Well, whoever wore that might exhibit herself for money!" That was the universal verdict of the ladies. They alluded to one of the fashion patterns.

The ill.u.s.trated supplement to the second number was Gabriel Egressy as Richard III., in the dream scene, surrounded by spectres; the picture was sketched by our countryman Valentine Kiss.

Her ladyship asked me which was the head of the princ.i.p.al figure, and which the feet. And I must confess that I myself could not quite make out how Richard III. had got his head between his knees.

With the ill.u.s.trated supplement to the third number, however, they were quite satisfied. It was Rosa Laborfalvy[15] as Queen Gertrude, by Barabas, a work of real artistic merit. This interested the ladies greatly.

[Footnote 15: Jokai's future wife, as will be seen in the sequel.]

"They say she has such wonderful eyes that there's nothing like them anywhere," said Miss Bessy.

The logical consequence of this should have been a contradiction accompanied by a flattering compliment on my part; but all at once it was as if something so squeezed my throat that I absolutely could not get the courtly expression out anyhow. "I have never seen her," I replied.

At the end of the fourth number was a lithograph representing a slim, youthful figure, and beneath it was written the name, Alexander Petofi.

It was one of the best sketches of Barabas. It is the one absolutely faithful portrait of the immortal poet. As such he was known by all those who lived with him, that eye gazing forth into the far distance, that mouth opened prophetically, those hands crossed behind him as if he would hide something in them. The whole portrait seems to say, "I _will_ be Petofi"; all the other portraits say, "I _am_ Petofi."

This picture produced a great impression upon the ladies, for the appearance of a lithographed portrait in a journal was a great event. In those days there were none of the beneficent penny papers, whose right of existence is considered amply justified if the frontispiece represents some one battering an old woman's head in with an axe. Only great and famous patriots enjoyed the distinction of figuring on t.i.tle-pages, and photography was not yet invented.... The appearance, then, of Petofi's portrait in an ill.u.s.trated supplement of the _Divatlap_ created quite a sensation.... The companion at once undertook to read the book of verses which had been sent to the house by me.

Bessy, on the other hand, desired to know whether she would find anything of mine in the portion of the journal devoted to the Belles-Lettres. Immediately afterwards she actually hit upon it. It was a portion of my romance, which appeared there under the t.i.tle of "Az ingovany oaza"--"The Oasis of the Fens."

"Well, I mean to read this at once."

I gave her plenty of time to do so, for I only appeared again after the lapse of several days.

She really _had_ read it. It was the first thing she told me.

"Now I am curious to know," she added, "what was the beginning of the story and what will be the end? You know, don't you?"

"How can I help knowing?"

"But I don't understand the t.i.tle. Where does the 'oiseau'[16] come in?"

[Footnote 16: The Hungarian _oaza_ (oasis) and the French _oiseau_ are p.r.o.nounced so very much alike, that the ill-instructed Bessy, who had never heard of the former, not unnaturally confounded them.]

I explained to her that the "_oaz_" was not a flying fowl, but a plot of verdure concealed in the desert.

"Then why don't you write 'island'?"

She was right there.

"Apropos of island," she continued, "I often see you from the verandah of our island summer-house walking up and down in front of our garden; yet you never give us so much as a glance, though we make noise enough."

"That is quite possible. At such times I am immersed."

"Immersed in what?"

"In working at my romance."

"Working and walking at the same time?"

"Such is my habit. I work out the whole scene in my head first of all, down to the smallest details, so that when I sit down it is a mere mechanical a-b-c sort of business."

"Then according to that, when you are marching with rapid strides up and down that long path, you neither hear nor see anything?"

"Pardon me, I see gra.s.s, trees, flowers, birds, stumps of trees, and huts of reeds overgrown with brambles. Amongst all these I weave my thoughts like the meshes of a spider's web. And I hear, too. I hear the piping of the yellow-hammer, the twittering of the t.i.tmouse, the notes of the horn from distant ships, the humming of the gnats, and they all have something to whisper to me, something to tell me. A buzzing wasp lends wings to my imagination; but if I meet a human face, the whole thing flies out of my thoughts, and a single 'your humble servant' will dissolve utterly my _fata Morgana_, until I turn back and reconstruct the ends of my spider's-web among the freshly-discovered reed-built huts, tree-trunks and trailing flowers, when the well-known voices of the dwellers in the wilderness bring back to me again my scattered ideas; then I retreat into the little wooden summer-house in our garden, and there, disturbed by n.o.body, I transfer to paper the images which stand before my mind."

And Bessy, contrary to my expectation, didn't laugh at this elucidation. On the contrary, she had grown quite serious. The expression of her eyes now resembled the expression which I had given them in her portrait.

"And this gives you pleasure?" she whispered. "It is just as if a man were to set off dreaming after taking care beforehand that all his dreams should turn out beautiful."

"Mr. Muki Bagotay," announced the footman.

I took up my hat. I could not endure that fellow. He had already enjoyed everything in reality which existed for me only in imagination....

The little wooden hut there in the orchard on the Danubian islet (whether it is still there I know not) was the most splendid palace in which I ever dwelt. 'Twas there I wrote my first romance. It is true that it had to put up with a lot of criticism, that first romance. What, indeed, did a young mind which knew nothing of men or of the world understand about romance writing? And yet I loved my first work, just as much as a man loves his first-born, though it may be deformed by all sorts of physical and spiritual defects. How plainly I still see before me those large, wide-spreading _Reineclaude_ trees, crammed with fruit ripe to bursting, which covered the little hut. A little farther off was an apple-tree covered with blood-red fruit, and then a second with taffety white, and a third with velvety apples. From the open door of the hut one could see right along the overgrown path, which was bordered on both sides by bowery vines. When the warm blood-red rays of summer pierced through the meshes of the foliage, it seemed as if every shadow was of green-gold. Far away on the banks of the Danube could be heard the delusive echoes from the military band in the "English Garden,"

whilst closer at hand the yellow-hammer piped, and a frog here and there croaked in the irrigating trenches. I was writing the hardest part of my romance--the love part, that most undiscoverable of all unknown worlds.

One may write down a description of the marsh world from the imagination, but not a description of the world of love. If the heart has not already discovered it, the head can tell us nothing at all about it.

All at once the green-gold shadows were lit up by something bright.

_She_ was standing there in the door of my hut, dressed in a white frock, with a straw hat fastened to two blue ribbons hanging upon her arm, and her dishevelled locks floating down her shoulders. For a moment I fancied that the dream-shapes of my imagination had taken bodily form.

Then her ringing peal of laughter a.s.sured me that a living person stood before me.

"How did you come here?"

"How? Why, by walking over the soft gra.s.s, of course."

"Alone?"

"Alone! Why not? Whom _should_ I have brought with me, I should like to know? I suppose I may come to a neighbour's garden unattended?"

It was quite true that our gardens were only about a hundred feet apart, lying one on each side of the common path, which ran right through the island.

"You don't seem to give me a very hearty reception," pouted she, as she entered my hut.

My head began to swim.

"On the contrary, I am overjoyed at the honour you do me, and I'll gather for you at once some of our princely plums."

n.o.body else had such plums then, and it was a good excuse, besides, for quitting the hut.

"I did not come for the sake of your princely plums; I filch them long before you ever taste them. I have come now to see how you make up your romance."

I pointed out to her that here was the paper and there the pen, and all a man had to do was to take up the pen, and it went on writing of its own accord.

"Then you don't peep into any book first of all?"

"You can see that I am provided with no tools of that sort."