# Imre: A Memorandum/Chapter I

I.
Masks.
Like flash toward metal, magnet sped to iron, A Something goes—a Current, mystic, strange— From man to man, from human breast to breast: Yet 'tis not Beauty Virtue, Grace, not Truth That binds nor shall unbind, that magic tie.»
(Grillparzer)
It was about four o'clock that summer afternoon, that I sauntered across a street in the cheerful Hungarian city of Szent-Istvánhely, and turned aimlessly into the café-garden of the Erzsébet-tér, where the usual vehement military-band concert was in progress. I looked about for a free table, at which to drink an iced-coffee, and to mind my own business for an hour or so. Not in a really cross-grained mood was I; but certainly dull, and preoccupied with perplexing affairs left loose in Vienna, and little inclined to observe ​persons and things for the mere pleasure of doing so.
The kiosque-garden was somewhat crowded. At a table, a few steps away, sat only one person; a young Hungarian officer in the pale blue and-fawn of a lieutenant of the well-known A—Infantry Regiment. He was not reading, though at his hand lay one or two journals. Nor did he appear to be bestowing any great amount of attention on the chattering around him, in that distinctively Szent-Istvánhely manner which ignores any kind of outdoor musical entertainment as a thing to be listened-to. An open letter was lying beside him, on a chair; but he was not heeding that. I turned his way; we exchanged the usual sacramental saluts, in which attention I met the glance, by so means welcoming, of a pair of peculiarly brilliant but not shadowless hazel eyes; and I sat down for my coffee. I remember that I had a swift, general impression that my neighbour was of no ordinary beauty of physique and elegance ​of bearing, even in a land where such matters are normal details of personality. And somehow it was also borne in upon me promptly that his mood was rather like mine. But this was a vague concern. What was Hecuba to me?—or Priam, or Helen, or Helenus, or anybody else, when for the moment I was so out of tune with life!
Presently, however, the band began playing (with amazing calmness from any Hungarian wind-orchestra) Roth's graceful «Frau Réclame» Waltz, then a novelty, of which trifle I happen to be fond. Becoming interested in the leader, I wanted to know his name. I looked across the table at my vis-à-vis. He was pocketing the letter. With a word of apology, which turned his face to me, I put the inquiry. I met again the look, this time full, and no longer unfriendly, of as winning and sincere a countenance, a face that was withal strikingly a temperamental face, as ever is bent toward friend or stranger. And it was a Magyar voice, that characteristically ​seductive thing in the seductive race, which answered my query; a voice slow and low, yet so distinct, and with just that vibrant thrill lurking in it which instantly says something to a listener's heart, merely as a sound, if he be susceptible to speaking-voices. A few commonplaces followed between us, as to the band, the programme, the weather—each interlocutor, for no reason that he could afterward explain, any more than can one explain thousands of such attitudes of mind during casual first meetings—taking a sort of involuntary account of the other. The commonplaces became more real exchanges of individual ideas. Evidently, this Magyar fellow-idler, in the Erzsébet-tér café, was in a social frame of mind, after all. As for myself, indifference to the world in general and to my surroundings in particular, dissipated and were forgot, my disgruntled and egotistical humour went to the limbo of all unwholesomenesses, under the charm of that musical accent, and in the frank sunlight of those manly, limpid eyes. There was soon a ​regular dialogue in course, between this stranger and me. From music (that open road to all sorts of mutualities on short acquaintanceships) and an art of which my neighbour showed that he knew much and felt even more than he expressed—from music, we passed to one or another aesthetic question; to literature, to social life, to human relationships, to human emotions. And thus, more and more, by unobserved advances, we came onward to our own two lives and beings. The only interruptions, as that long and clear afternoon lengthened about us, occurred when some military or civil acquaintance of my incognito passed him, and gave a greeting. I spoke of my birth-land, to which I was nowadays so much a stranger. I sketched some of the long and rather goal-less wanderings, almost always alone, that I had made in Central Europe and the Nearer East—his country growing, little by little, my special haunt. I found myself charting out to him what things I liked and what things I anything but liked, in this world where most of ​us must be satisfied to wish for considerably more than we receive. And in return, without any more questions from me than I had from him—each of us carried along by that irresistible undercurrent of human intercourse that is indeed, the Italian simpatia, by the quick confidence that one's instinct assures him is neither lightly-bestowed, after all, nor lightly-taken—did I begin, during even those first hours of our coming-together, to know no small part of the inner individuality of Imre von N..., hadnagy (Lieutenant) in the A... Honvéd Regiment, stationed during some years in Szent-Istvánhely.
Lieutenant Imre's concrete story was an exceedingly simple matter. It was the every day outline of the life of nine young Magyar officers in ten. He was twenty-five; the only son of an old Transylvanian family; one pour now as never before, but evidently quite as proud as ever. He had had other notions, as a lid, of a calling. But the men of the N.... line had always been in the army, ever since the ​days of Szigetvár and the Field of Mohács. Soldiers, soldiers! always soldiers! So he had graduated at the Military Academy. Since then? Oh, mostly routine-life, routine work . . . a few professional journeyings in the provinces—no advancement and poor pay, in a country where an officer must live particularly like a gentleman; if too frequently only with the ⟨aid⟩ of confidential business-interviews with Jewish usurers. He sketched his happenings in the barracks or the ménage—and his own simple, social interests, when in Szent-Istvánhely. He did not live with his people, who were in too remote a quarter of the town for his duties. I could see that even if he were rather removed from daily contact with the family-affairs, the present home atmosphere was a depressing one, weighing much on his spirits. And no wonder! In the beginning of a brilliant career, the father had become blind and was now a pensioned officer, with a shattered, irritable mind as well as body, a burden to everyone about him. The mother had been a beauty and rich. Both ​her beauty and riches long ago had departed, and her health with them. Two sisters were dead, and two others had married officials in modest Government stations in distant cities. There were more decided shadows than lights in the picture. And there came to me, now and then, as it was sketched, certain inferences that made it a thought less promising. I guessed the speaker's own nervous distaste for a profession arbitrarily bestowed on him. I caught his something too-passionate half-sigh for the more ideal daily existence, seen always through the dust of the dull highroad that often does not seem likely ever to lead one out into the open. I noticed traces of weakness in just the ordinary armour a man needs in making the most of his environment, or in holding-out against its tyrannies. I saw the irresolution, the doubts of the value of life's struggle, the sense of fatality as not only a hindrance but as excuse. Not in mere curiosity so much as in sympathy, I traced or divined such things; and then in looking at him, I partly understood why, at ​only about five-and-twenty, Lieutenant Imre von N. . . . .'s forehead showed those three or four lines that were incongruous with as sunny a face. Still, I found enough of the lighter vein in his autobiography to relieve it wholesomely. So I set him down for the average-situated young Hungarian soldier, as to the material side of his life or the rest; blessed with a cheerful temperament and a good appetite, and plagued by no undue faculties of melancholy or introspection. And, by-the by, merely to hear, to see, Imre von N. . . . laugh, was to forget that one's own mood a moment earlier had been grave enough, it migt be, He had the charm of a child's most infectious mirth, and its current was irresistible.
Now, in remembering what was to come later for us two, I need record here only one incident, in itself slight, of that first afternoon's parliament. I have mentioned that Lieutenant Imre seemed to have his full share of acquaintances, at least of the comrade-​class, in Szent-Istvánhely. I came to the conclusion as the afternoon went along, that he must be what is known as a distinctly «popular party». One man after another, by no means of only his particular regiment, would stop to chat with him as they entered and quit the garden, or would come over to exchange a bit of chaff with him. And in such of the meetings, came more or less—how shall I call it?—demonstrativeness, never unmanly, which is almost as racial to many Magyarak as to the Italians and Austrians. But afterwards I remembered, as a trait not so much noticed at the time, that Lieutenant Imre, did not seen to be at all a friend of such demeanor. For example, if the interlocutor laid a hand on Lieutenant Imre's shoulder, the Lieutenant quietly drew himself back a little. If a hand were put out, he did not see it at once, nor did he hold it long in the fraternal clasp. It was like a nervous habit of personal reserve; the subtlest sort of mannerism. Yet he was absolutely courteous, even cordial. His regimental friends appeared to ​meet him in no such merely perfunctory fashion as generally comes from the daily intercourse of the service, the army-world over. One brother-officer paused to reproach him sharply for not appearing at some affair or other at a friend's quarters, on the preceding evening «when the very cat and dog missed you.» Another comrade wanted to know why he kept «out of a fellow's way, no matter how hard one tries to see something of you.» An elderly civilian remained several minutes at his side, to make sure that the young Herr Lieutenant would not forget to dine with the So-and-So family, at a birthday-fète, in course of next few days. Again,—«Seven weeks was I up there, in that d––d little hole in Galizien! And I wrote you long letters, three letters! Not a post-card from you did I get, the whole time!» ...... remonstrated another comrade.
Soon I remarked on this kind of dialogue.
«You have plenty of excellent friends in the world, I perceive,» said I.
For the first time, that day, since one or ​another topic had occurred, something like scorn—or a mocking petulance—came across his face.
«I must make you a stale sort of answer, to—pardon me—a very stale little flattery,» he answered. «I have acquaintances, many of them quite well enough, as far as they go—men that I see a good deal of, and willingly. But friends? Why, I have the fewest possible! I can count them on one hand! I live too much to myself, in a way, to be more fortunate, even with every Béla, János and Ferencz reckoned-in. I don't believe you have to learn that a man can be always much more alone in his life than appears his case. Much!» He paused and then added:
«And, as it chances, I have just lost, so to say, one of my friends. One of the few of them. One who has all at once gone quite out of my life, as ill-luck would have it. It has given me a downright stroke at my heart. You know how such things affect one. I have ​been dismal just this very afternoon, absurdly so, merely in realizing it.»
«I infer that your friend is not dead?»
«Dead? No, no, not that!» He laughed. «But, all things concerned, he might as well be dead—for me. He is a marine-officer in the Royal Service. We met about four years ago. He has been doing some Government engineering work here. We have been constantly together, day in, day out. Our tastes are precisely the same. For only one of them, he is almost as much a music-fiend as I am! We've never had the least difference. He is the sort of man one never tires of. Everyone likes him! I never knew a finer character, not anyone quite his equal, who could count for as much in my own life. And then, "besides, he continued in a more earnest tone "he is the type to exert on such a fellow as, I happen to be, exactly the influences that are good for me. That I know. A man of iron resolution.....strong will....energies. Nothing stops him, once he sees what is worth ​doing, what must be done. Not at all a dreamer.... not morbid.. and so on.»
«Well,» said I, both touched and amused by this näiveté, «and what has happened?»
«Oh, he was married last month, and ordered to China for time indefinite.... a long affair for the Government. He cannot possibly return for many years, quite likely never.»
«Two afflictions at once, indeed,» I said, laughing a little, he joining in ruefully. «And might I know under which one of them you, as his deserted Fidus Achates, are suffering most? I inter that you think your friend has added insult to injury.»
«What? I don't understand. Ah, you mean the marriage-part of it? Dear me, no! nothing of the sort! I am only too delighted that it has come about for him. His bride has gone out to Hong-Kong with him, and they expect to settle down into the most complete matrimonial bliss there. Besides, she is a woman that I have always admired simply unspeakably... oh, quite platonically. I beg to assure you!.. as have done just about half the men ​in Szent-Istvánhely, year in and out—who were not as lucky as my friend. She is absolutely charming—of high rank—an old Bohemian family—beautiful, talented, with the best heart in the world..... and—Istenein!» he exclaimed in a sudden, enthusiastic retrospect... «how she sings Brahms! They are the model of a match.... the handsomest couple that you could ever meet.»
«Ah ... is your marine friend of uncommon good-looks?» He glanced across at the acacia-tree opposite, as if not having heard my careless question, or else as it momentarily abstracted. I was about to make some other remark, when he replid, in an odd, vaguely-directed accent. «I beg your pardon! Oh, yes, indeed...my friend is of exceptional physique. In the service, he is called «Hermes Karvaly»... his family name is Karvaly.... though there's Sicilian blood him too—because he looks so astonishingly like that statue you know—the one by that Greek—Praxiteles, isn't it? However, looks are just one detail of Karvaly's unusualness. And to carry out that, never was ​a man more head over heels in love with his own wife! Karvaly never does anything by halves.»
«I beg to compliment on your enthusiasm for your friend... plainly one of the 'real ones' indeed,» I said. For, I was not a little stirred by this frank evidence, of a trait that sometimes brings to its possessor about as much melancholy as it does happiness. «Or, perhaps I would better congratulate Mr. Karvaly and his wife on leaving their merits in such generous care. I can understand that this separation means much to you.»
He turned full upon me. It was as if he forgot wholly that I was a stranger. He threw back his head slightly, and opened wide those unforgettable eyes—eyes that were, for the instant, sombre, troubled ones.
«Means much? Ah, ah, so very much! I dare say you think it odd.... but I have never had anything... never... work upon me so!.... I couldn't have believed that such a thing could so upset me. I was thinking of some matters that are part of the affair—of its ridiculous ​effect on me—just when you came here and sat down. I have a letter from him, too, today, with all sorts of messages from himself and his bride, a regular turtle-dove letter. Ah, the lucky people in this world! What good thing that there are some.!» He paused, reflectively. I did not break the silence ensuing. All at once «Teremtette!» he exclaimed, with a short laugh, of no particular merriment,—«what must you think of me, my dear sir! Pray pardon me! To be talking along—all this personal, sentimental stuff—rubbish—to a perfect stranger! Idiotic!» He frowned irritably, the lines in his brow showing clear. He was looking me in the eyes with a mixture of, shall I say, antagonism and appeal; psychic counter-waves of inward query and of outward resistance.... of apprehension, too. Then, again he said most formally. «I never talked this way with any one—at least never till now. I am an idiot! I beg your pardon.»
«You haven't the slightest need to beg it,» I answered, «much less to feel the least discomfort in having spoken so warmly of this ​friendship and separation. Believe me, stranger or not... and, really we seem to be passing quickly out of that degree of acquaintance... I happen to be able to enter thoroughly into your mood. I have a special sense of the beauty and value of friendship. It often seems a lost emotion. Certainly, life is worth living only as we love our friends and are sure of their regard for us. Nobody ever can feel too much of that; and it is, in some respects, a pity that we don't say it out more. It is the best thing in the world, even if the exchange of friendship for friendship is a chemical result often not to be analyzed; and too often not at all equal as an exchange.»
He repeated my last phrase slowly, «Too often—not equal?»
«Not by any means. We all have to prove that. Or most of us do. But that fact must not make too much difference with us; not work too much against our giving our best, even in receiving less than we wish. You may remember that a great French social philosopher has declared that when we love, we are happier in the ​emotion we feel than in that which we excite.»
«That sounds like—like that «Maxims» gentleman—Rochefoucauld?
«It was Rochefoucauld.»
My vis-à-vis again was mute. Presently he said sharply and with it disagreeable note of laughter. «That isn't true, my dear sir!—that nice little French sentiment! At least I don't believe it is! Perhaps I am not enough of a philosopher—yet. I haven't time to be, though I would be glad to learn how.
With that, he turned the topic. We said no more as to friends, friendship or French philosophy. I was satisfied, however, that my new acquaintance was anything but a cynic, in spite of his dismissal, so cavalierly, of a subject on which he had entered with such abrupt confidentiality.
So had its course my breaking into an acquaintance... no, let me not use as burglarious and vehement a phrase, for we do not take the Kingdom of Friendship by violence even though ​we are assured that there is that sort of an entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven—so was my passing suddenly into the open door of my intimacy (as it turned out be) with Lieutenant Imre von N..... It was all as casual as my walking into the Erssébet-tér Cafe. That is, if anything is casual. I have set down only a fragment of that first conversation; and I suspect that did I register much more, the personality of Imre would not be significantly sharpened to anyone, that is to say in regard to what was my impression of him then. In what I have jotted, lies one detail of some import; and there is shown enough of the swift confidence, the current of immediate mutuality which sped back and forth between us. «Es gibt ein Zug, ein wunderliches Zug»... declares Grillparzer, most truthfully. Such an hour or so.... for the evening was drawing on when we parted..... was a kindly prophecy as to the future of the intimacy, the trust, the decreed progression toward them, even through our—reserves.
​We met again, in the same place, at the same hour, a few days later; of course, this time by an appointment carefully and gladly kept. That second evening. I brought him back with me to supper, at the Hotel L—, and it was not until a late hour (for one of the most early-to-bed capitals of Europe) that we bade each other good-night at the restaurant-door. By the by, not till that evening was rectified a minor neglect.... complete ignorance of one another's names! The fourth or fifth day of our ripening partnership, we spent quite and entirely together, beginning it in the same coffee house at breakfast, making a long inspection of Imre's pleasant lodging, opposite my hotel, and of his music-library; and ending it with a bit of an excursion into one of Szent-Istvánhely's suburbs; and with what had already become a custom, our late supper, with a long aftertalk. The said suppers by the by, were always amusingly modest banquets. Imre was by no means a valiant trencher-man, though so strong-limbed and well-fleshed. So ran the quiet course of our first ten days, our first two ​weeks a term in which, no matter what necessary interruptions came, Lieutenant Imre von N.... and I made it clear to one another, though without it dozen words to such effect, that we regarded the time we could pass together as by far the most agreable, not to say important, matter of each day. We kept on continually adjusting every other concern of the twenty-four hours toward our rendezvous, instinctively. We seemed to have grown so vaguely concerned with the rest of the world, our interests that were not in common now abode in such a curious suppression, they seemed so colourless, that we really appeared to have entered another and a removed sphere inhabited by only ourselves, with each meeting. As it chanced, Inre was for the nonce, free from any routine of duties of a regimental character. As for myself, I had come to Szent-Istvánhely with no set time-limit before me; the less because one of the objects of my stay was studying, under a local professor, that difficult and exquisite tongue which was Imre's native one, though, by the way, he was like ​so many other Magyars in slighting it by a perverse preference. (For a long time, we spoke only French or German when together.) So between my sense of duty to Magyar, and a sense, even more acute, of a great unwillingness to leave Szent-Istvánhely—it was growing fast to something like an eighth sense... I could abide my time, or the date when Imre must start for certain annual regimental maneuvers, down in Slavonia. With reference to the idle curiosity of our acquaintances as to this so emphatic a state of dualism for Imre and myself.... such an inseparable sort of partnership which might well suggest something...
... «too rash, too unadvised, too sudden, Too like the lightening which doth cease to be Ere one can say "It lightens"...
... why we were careful. Even in one of the countries of Continental Europe where sudden, romantic friendship is a good deal of a cult, it seems that there is neither wisdom nor pleasure in wearing one's heart on one's sleeve. Best not to placard sudden affinities; between ​soldiers and civilists, especially. It was Imre von N.... himself who gave me this information, or hint; though not any clear explanation of its need. But he and I not only kept out of the most frequented haunts of social and military Szent-Istvánhely thenceforth, but spoke (on occasion) to others of my having come to the place especially to be with Imre, again,—«for the first time in three years», since we had become «acquainted with each other down in Sarajevo, one morning»—during a visit to the famous Husruf-Beg Mosque there! This easy fabrication was sufficient. Nobody questioned it. As a fact, Imre and I, when comparing notes one afternoon had found out that really we had been in Sarajevo at the exact date mentioned. «The lie that is half a truth is ever» .... the safest of lies, as well as the convenientest one.
Now of what did two men thus insistent on one another's companionship, one of them some twenty-five years of age, the other past thirty, neither of them vapourous with the vague hentusiasms of first manhood, nor fluent with ​the mere sentimentalities of idealism.... of what did we talk, hour in and hour out, that our company was so welcome to each other, even to the point of our being indifferent to all the rest of our friends round about!.... centering ourselves on the time together as the best thing in the world for us. Such it question repeats a common mistake, to begin with. For it presupposes that companionship is a sort of endless conversazione, a State-Council ever in session. Instead, the silences in intimacy stand for the most perfect mutuality. And, besides, no man or woman has yet ciphered out the real secret of the finest quality, clearest sense, of human companionability—a thing that often grows up, flower and fruit, so swiftly as to be like the oriental juggler's magic mango-plant. We are likely to set ourselves to analyzing, over and over, the externals and accidence... the mere inflections of friendships, as it were. But the real secret evades us. It ever will evade. We are drawn together because we are drawn. We are content to abide together just because we are content. ​We feel that we have reached a certain harbour, after much or little drifting, just because it is for that haven, after all, that we have been moving on and on; with all the irresistible pilotry of the wide ocean-wash friendly to us. It is as foolish to make too much of the definite in friendship as it is in love—which is the highest expression of companionship. Friendship?—love? what are they if real on both sides, but the great Findings? Grillparzer... once more to cite that noble poet of so much that is profoundly psychic... puts all the negative and the positive of it into the appeal of his Jason..
«In my far home, a fair belief is found, That double, by the Gods, each human soul Created is... and, once so shaped, divided. So shall the other half its fellow seek O' er land, o' er sea, till when it once be found, The parted halves, long-sundered, blend and mix In one, at last! Feel'st thou this half-heart? Beats it with pain, divided, in thy breast ? O... come!»
​As a fact, my new friend and I had an interesting range of commonplace and practical topics, on which to exchange ideas. Sentimentalities were quite in abeyance. We were both interested in art, as well as in sundry of the less popular branches of literature, and in what scientifically underlies practical life. Moreover, I had been longtime enthusiastic as to Hungary and the Hungarians, the land, the race, the magnificent military history, the complicated, troublous aspects of the present and the future of the Magyar Kingdom. And though I cannot deny that I have met with more ardent Magyar patriots than Imre von N... for somehow he took a conservative view of his birth-land and fellow-citizens—still, he was always interested in clarifying my ideas. Again, contrary-wise, Lieutenant Imre was zealous in informing himself on matters and things pertaining to my own country and to its system of social and military life, as well as concerning a great deal more; even to my native language, of which he could speak precisely seven words, four of them too forcible for use in general ​polite society. Never was there a quicker, a more aggressively intelligent mind than his; the intellect that seeks to take in a thing as swiftly yet as fully as possible.... provided, as Imre confessed, with complete absence or shame, the topic «attracted» him. Fortunately, most interesting topics did so; and what he learned once, he learned for good and all. I smile now as I remember the range, far afield often, of our talks when we were in the mood for one. I think that in those first ten days of our intercourse we touched on, I should say, a hundred subjects—from Arpád the Great to the Seventh Symphony, from the prospects of the Ausgleich to the theory of Bisexual Languages, from Washington to Kossuth, from the novels of Jókai to the best gulyás, from harvesting-machines, drainage, income-taxes, and whether a woman ought to wear earrings or not, to the Future State! No,—one never was at a loss for a topic when with Imre, and one never tired of his talk about it, any more than one tired of Imre when mute as Memnon, because of his own meditations, or when he ​was, apparently, like the Jolly Young Waterman, "rowing along", thinking of nothing at all.
And besides more general matters, there was ... for so is it in friendship as in love... ever that quiet undercurrent of inexhaustible curiosity about each other as an Ego, a psychic fact not yet mutually explained. Therewith comes in that kindly seeking to know better and better the Other, is a being not yet fully outlined, as one whom we would understand even from the farthest-away time when neither friend suspected the other's existence, when each was meeting the world alone—as one now looks back on those days... and was absorbed in so much else in life, before Time had been willing to say, "Now meet, you two! Have I not been preparing you for each other?" So met, the simple personal retrospect is an ever new affair of detail for them, with its queries, its confessions, its comparisons. «I thought that, but now I think this. Once on a time I believed that, but now I believe this. I did so and so, in those ​ old days; but now, not so. I have desired, hoped, feared, purposed, such or such a matter then; now no longer. Such manner of man have I been, whereas nowadays my identity before myself is thus and so.» Or, it is the presenting of what has been enduringly a part of ourselves, and is likely ever abide such? Ah, these are the moods and tenses of the heart and the soul in friendship! more and more willingly uttered and listened-to as intimacy and confidence thrive. Two natures are seeking to blend. Each is glad to be its own directory for the newcomer; to treat him as an expected and welcomed guest to the Castle of Self, while yet something of a stranger to it; opening to him any doors and windows that will throw light on the labyrinth of rooms and corridors, wishing to keep none shut. . . . perhaps not even some specially haunted, remote and even black-hung chamber. Guest? No, more than that, for is it not the tenant of all others, the Master, who at last, has arrived!
​Probably this is the best place in my narrative to record certain particularly personal aspects of Lieutenant Imre, though in giving them I must draw on details and impressions that I gained gradually—later. During even that earlier stage of our friendship, he insisted on my going with him to his father's house, house, to meet his parents. From them, as from two or three of his officer-friends with whom I occasionally foregathered, when Imre did not happen to be of the party of us, I derived facts—side-lights and perspectives—of use. But the most part of what I note came from Imre's tendency toward introspection; and from his own frank lips.
He had been a singularly sensitive, warm-hearted boy, indeed too high-strung, too impressionable. He had been petted by even the merest strangers be cause of his engaging manners and his peculiarly striking boyish beauty. He had not been robust as a lad (though now superbly so) with the result that his schooling had been desultory and unsystematic. "And I wanted to study art, I didn't care what ​art... music, painting, sculpture, perhaps music more than anything... I hated the army! But my father—his heart was set on my doing what the rest of us had done... I was the only son left .. it had to be." And however little was Imre at heart a soldier, he bad made himself into a most excellent officer. I soon heard that from all his comrades whom I met; and I have heard it often since those days in Szent-Istvánhely. His sense of his personal duty, his pride, his filial affection, his feeling toward his King, all contributed toward the outward semblance that was at least so desirable. He had already been highly commended; probably promotion would soon come. He had always won cordial words from his superiors. Loving not in the least the work, he played his unwelcome part well and manly, so that not more than half a dozen individuals could have been sure that Imre von N... hadnagy, would have doffed gladly, at any minute, the King's Coat for a blouse. Ambition failed him, alas! just because he was at heart indifferent to the reward. But he ran the race well. And ​for the matter of ambition the advancement in the Magyar service is as deliberate as in other armies in peace-times. Imre needed much stronger influence than what was at his request, to hurry him beyond a lieutenancy.
With only one such contest in his soul, no wonder that Imre led his life in Szent-Istvánhely so much to himself, however open to others it seemed to be. Yet whatever depressed him, he was determined not to be a man of moods to the cynical world's eyes. As a fact he was so happily a creature of buoyant temperament, that his popularity was not surprising, on the basis of comrade-intercourse and of the pleasantly superficial side of a regimental life. Every man was Imre's friend! Every woman was, such, that I ever heard speaking of him, or spoken-of along with his name. The paradox of living to oneself while living with everyone, the doors of an individuality both open and shut, could no farther go than in his instance.
How fully was I to realize that, in a little time!
​As to physique, Imre had fulfilled in his maturity the promise of his boyhood. He was called "Handsome N...", right and left; and he deserved the sobriquet. Of middle height, he possessed a slender figure, faultless in proportions, a wonder of muscular development, of strength, lightness and elegance. His athletic powers were renowned in his regiment. He was among the crack gymnasts, vaulters and swimmers. I have seen him, often, make a standing-leap over an ordinary library-table, to land, like a cat, on the other side. I have seen him, half-a-dozen times, spring out of a common barrel into another one placed beside it, without touching his hands to either. He could hold out a heavy garden-chair perfectly straight, with one hand; break a stout penholder or leadpencil between his second and third fingers; and bend a thick, brass curtain-rod by his leg-muscles. He frequently swam directly across the wide Duna, making nothing of its cross-currents at Szent-Istvánhely. He was a consummate fencer, and a prize-shot. He could jump on and off a running horse, like a vaq​uero. Yet all this force, this muscular address, was concealed by the symmetry of his graceful, elastic frame. Not till he was nude, and one could trace the ripple of muscle and sinew under the fine, hairless skin, did one realize the machinery of such strength. I have never seen any other man—unless Magyar, Italian or Arab—walk with such elasticity and dignity. It was a pleasure simply to see Imre cross the street.
His head, a small, admirably shaped one, with its close-cut golden hair, carried out his Hellenic exterior. For it was really a small head to be set on such broad shoulders and on as well-grown a figure. As to his face (generally a detail of least relative importance in the male type), I do not intend to analyze retrospectively certainly one of the most engaging of manly countenances that I have ever looked upon. The actual features were delicate enough, but without womanish-ness. Imre was not a pretty man; but a beautiful man. And the mixture of maturity and of almost boyish youth, the outlook of his ​natural sincerity and warmth of nature, his self-unconsciousness and self-respect... these entered into the matter of his good looks, quite as much as his merely technical beauty. I did not wonder that not only the women in Szent-Istvánhely but the street-children, ave, the very dogs and cats it seemd to me, would look at him with friendly interest. Those lustrous hazel eyes, with the white so clear around the pupils... the indwelling laughter in them that nevertheless could be overcast with so penetrating a seriousness...! It seems to me that now, as I write, I meet their look. I lay down my pen for an instant as my own eyes suddenly blur. Yet why?. We should find tears rising for a living grief, not a living joy!
United with all this capital of a man's physical attractiveness was Imre's extraordinary modesty. He never seemed to think of his appearance for so much as two minutes together. He never glanced into a mirror when he happened to pass near that piece of furni​ture which seems to inflict a sort of nervous disease of the eyes... occasionally also of the imagination... on the average soldier of any rank and uniform, the world round. "Thanks... but I don't trouble myself much about looking-glasses, when I've once got my clothes on my back and am certain that my face isn't dirty!" was his reply to me one morning when I gave him an amused look because he had happened to plant his chair exactly in front of the biggest pier-glass in the K... Café. He never posed; never fussed as to his toilet, nor worried concerning the ultrafitting of his clothes, nor studied with anxiety details of his person. One day, another officer was lamenting the melancholy fact that baldness was gaining ground slyly, pitilessly, on the speaker's hyacinthine locks. He gave utterance to a sorrowful envy of Imre. "Pooh, pooh" returned Imre, hadnagy, scornfully, "It's in the family... and such a convenience in warm weather! I shall be bald as a cannon-shot by the time I am thirty!" He detested all jewellery in the way of masculine adornments, and wore ​none: and his civilian clothing was of the plainest.
The making-up of every man refers, or should do so, to a fourfold development... his physical, mental, moral and temperamental equipment, in which last-named class we can include the aesthetic individuality. The endowment of Imre von N... as to this series was decidedly less symmetrical than otherwise. In fact, he was a striking example of contradictions and inequations. He had studied hardest when in his school-courses just what came easiest... with the accustomed results of that sort of process. He was a bad, a perversely bad mathematician; an indifferent linguist, simply becase he had found it "a hideous job to learn all those complicated verbs"; an excellent scholar in history; took delight in chemistry and in other physical sciences; and though so easily plagued by a simple sum in decimals, he had a passion for astronomy, and he knew not a little about it, at least theoretically. Physical science appealed to him, cur​iously; his small library was two-thirds full of books on those topics. He loved to read popular philosophy and biography and travel. For novels, as for poetry, he cared almost nothing. He would spare no pains to get to the bottom of some subject that interested him, a thing that "bit" him, as he called it; short of actually setting himself down to the calm and applicative study of it! Tactics did he, somehow deliberately learn; grimly, angrily, but with success. They were indispensable to his professional credit. Such a result showed plainly enough that he lacked resolution, concentration as a duty, but did not lack capability. Many a sound lecture from myself, as from other friends, including particularly, as I found out, from the much-married Karvaly, did Imre receive respecting this defect. A course in training in the Officers' Military School (Hadiskola) was involved in the difficulty, or perversity, so in evidence. This Hadiskola course is an indispensable in such careers as Imre's sort should achieve, willing or unwilling. When a young officer is so obsti​nately cold to what lies toward good work in the Hadiskola, and in his inmost soul desires almost anything rather than becoming even a major... why, what can one say severe enough to him?
Yet, with reference to what might be called Imre's æsthetic self-expression, I wish to record one thing at variance with much which was negative in him. At least it was in contradiction to his showing such modest "literary impulses", and to his relative aversion to belles-lettres, and so on. When Imre was deeply stirred over something or other that "struck home", by some question to open the fountains of innerinost feeling in him, it was remarkable with what exactitude,—more than that, what genuine emotional eloquence of phrase—he could express himself! This even to losing that slight hesitancy of diction which was an ordinary characteristic. I was often surprised at the simple, direct beauty, sometimes downright poetic grace, in his language on such unexpected occasions. He seemed to become tinged with quite another personality, ​or to be following, in a kind of trance, the prompting of some voice audible to him only. I shall hardly so much as once attempt conveying this effect of sudden "ihletés", even in coming to the moments of our intercourse when it surged up. It must in most part be taken for granted; read between the lines now and then. But... one must be mindful of its natural explanation. For, after all, there was no miracle in it. Imre was a Magyar; one of a race in which sentimental eloquence is always lurking in the blood, even to a poetic passion in verbal utterance that is often out of all measure with the mere formal education of a man or a woman. He was a Hungarian: which means among other things that a cowherd who cannot write his name, and who does not know where London is, can be overheard making love to his sweetheart, or lamenting the loss of his mother, in language that is almost of Homeric beauty. It is the Oriental quality, ever in the Magyar; now to be admired by us, now disliked, according to the application of the traits. Imre had his full share ​of Magyarism of temperament, and of its impromptu eloquence; taking the place of much of a literal acquaintance with Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, and all the rhetorical and literary Parnassus in general.
He detested politics, as might be divined. He "loved" his Apostolic King and his country much as do some children their nearest relatives; that is to say, on general principles, and to the sustaining of a correct attitude before himself and the world. On this matter, also he and I had many passages-at-arms. He had not much "religion." But he was a firm believer in God; in helping one's neighbour, even to most in judicious generosity; in avoiding debts "when one could possibly do so" (a reserve that I regretted to find out was not his case any more than it is usually the case with young Hungarian officers living in a capital city, with small home-subventions); in honour; in womanly virtue; in a true tongue and a clean one. His sense of fun was not limited to the kind that may pass between a rector of the Establishment and his daught​ers over afternoon-tea. But Lieutenant Imre von N.... had no relish for the stupid-smutty sallies and stock racontars of the officers' mess and the barracks. Unless a "story" really possessed wit and homour, he had absolutely dull ears for it.
He wrote a shameful handwriting, with invariable hurry-scurry; he could not draw a pot-hook straight, and he took uncertain because untaught interest in painting. Sculpture, and architecture appealed more to him, though also in an untaught way. But he was a most excellent practical musician; playing the piano-forte superbly well, as to general effect, with an amazingly bad technic of his own evolution, got together without any teaching; and not reading well and rapidly at sight. Indeed, his musical enthusiasm, his musical insight and memory, they were all of a piece; the rich and perilous endowment of the born son of Orpheus. His singing-voice was a full baritone.... smooth and sweet, like his irresistible speaking-voice. He would play or sing for hours together, quite alone in his rooms, of ​an evening. He would go without his dinner (he often did) to pay for his concert-ticket or standing-place in the Royal Opera. He did not care for the society of professional musicians or of the theaterfolk in general. "They really are not worth while," he used to say... "art is one thing to me and artists another—or nothing at all—off the stage." As for more general society, why, he said frankly that nowadays the N.... family simply were too poor to go into it, and that he had no time for it. So he was to be met in only a few of the Szent-Istvánhely drawing rooms. Yet he was passionately fond of dancing... anything from a waltz to a csárdás. But, à-propos of Imre's amusement, let me note here (for I dare say, the incredulity of persons who have stock-ideas of what belongs to soldier-life and soldier-nature) that three usual pleasures were not his; for he abominated cards, indeed never played them; he did not smoke; and he seldom drank out his glass of wine or beer, having no taste for liquors of any sort. This in a champion athlete and an "all-round" ​active soldier... at least externally thoroughly such... in a smart regiment, is not common. I should have mentioned above that he was oddly indifferent to the theater, as the theater, declaring that he never could find "any great illusion" in it. He much liked billiards, and was invincible in them. His feeling for whatever was natural, simple, out-of-doors was great. He loved to walk, to walk alone, in the open country, in the woodlands and fields... to talk with peasants, who invariably "took to" him at once. He loved children, and was a born animal-friend; in fact, between him and beasts little and big, there appeared to be a regular understanding. Never forthputting, he could delight, in a quiet way in the liveliest company. That buoyancy of his temperament, so in contrast with the other elements of his nature, was a vast blessing to him. He certainly had a supply of personal subjects sufficiently sobering for home-consumption, some of which I soon knew; others not spoken till later. The gloom in his parents' house, the various might-have-beens in his own young ​life, the wearisome struggle to do his duty in a professional career whereto he had been called without its being chosen by him; weightier still the fact that he was in the hands of a couple of usurers on account of his generous share of the deficit in a foolish brother officer's finances, to the extent of some thousands of florins.... these were not trifles for Imre's private meditations. I could quite well understand his remarking... "I have tried to cultivate cheerfulness on just about the same principle that when a man hasn't a korona in his pocket he does well to dress himself in his best clothes and swagger in the Officers' Casino as if he were a millionaire. For the time, he forgets that he isn't one... poor devil!"
But I am belated, I see, in alluding to two traits in our acquaintance, ab initio, which are of significance in my outline of Imre's personality while new to me: and more than trifles in their weight. There were two subjects as to which remarkably little was said between us during the first ten days of my going-about so much with him. "Remarkably little" I say, ​because of Imre's own frank references to one matter, on our first meeting; and because we were both men, and neither of us octogenarians, nor troubled with super-sensitiveness in talking about all sorts of things. The first of these overpassed topics was the friendship between Imre and the absent Karvaly Miklos. Since the afternoon on which we had met, Imre referred so little to Karvaly.... he seemed so indifferent to his absence, all at once... indeed he appeared to be shunning the topic... that I avoided it completely. It gradually was borne in upon me that he wished me to avoid it. So no more expansiveness on the perfections and gifts of the exile! Of Karvaly's young bride, on the other hand, the fascinating Bohemian lady who sang Brahms' songs so beautifully, Imre was still distinctly eloquent; alluding often to one or another of her shining attributes... paragon that she may have been! I write 'may have been'; because to this day I know her, like Shakespear's Olivia, – "only by her good report".
The other matter of our reticence was an ​instance of the difference between the general and the particular. Very early in my meeting with Imre's more immediate circle of soidier-friends, I heard over and over again that to Imre, as one of the officers most distinguished in all the town for personal beauty, there attached a reputation of being an ever-campaigning and ever-victorious Don Juan... if withal one of most exceptional discretion. Right and left, he was referred to as a wholesale enemy to the peace of heart and to the virtue of dozens of the fair citizenesses of Szent-Istvánhely. Two of these romances, the heroine of one of them being an extremely beautiful and refined déclassée whose sudden suicide hand been the gossip of the clubs, were heightened by the touch of the tragic. But along with them, and the inore ordinary chatter about a young man's bonnes fortunes, or what were taken to be them, there were surmises and assertions of vague, aristocratic, deep, unconfessed ties and adventures. The Germans use the terms "Weiberfreund" and "Weiberfeind" in rather a special sense sometimes. Now, I knew that ​Imre von N. . . was no woman-hater. He admired, and had a circle of admiring, women-friends enough to dismiss at once such an ungallant accusation. Never was there a sharper eye, not even in Magyarország, for an harmonious female figure, a graceful carriage, a charming face . . . . he was a connaisseur de race!
But when it came to his alluding, when we were by ourselves, to anything like really intimate sentimental—I would best plainly say amorous—relations with the other sex, Imre never opened his mouth for a word of the least real significance! He referred to himself, casually, now and then, and as it appeared to me in precisely the right key, as one to whom woman was a sufficiently definite social and physical attraction . . . . necessity . . . quite as essentially as is to be expected with a young soldier of normal health and robust constitution. When it suited his mixed society, he had as many "discreet stories" as Poins. But when he and I were alone, no matter whatever else he spoke of . . . so unreservedly, ​so temperamentally!—he never did what is commonly called "talk women." He never so much alluded to a light-o' love, to an "affair", to any distinctly sexual interest in a ballerina or—a princess! And when third parties were pleased to compliment him, or to question him, as to such a thing, Imre "smiling put the question by." His special reserve concerning these topics, so rare in men of his profession and age, was as emphatic as in the instance of the average English gentleman. I admired it, certainly not wishing it less. I often thought how well it became Imre's general refinement of disposition, manners and temperamental bias... most of all, suiting that surprising want of vanity as to his person, his character, his entire individuality.
In this connection, came a bit of an incident that has its significance... as things came to pass later in our acquaintance. One evening, while I was dressing for dinner, with Imre making a random visit, I lapsed into hearty irritation as to a marvellously ill-fitting new garment, ​that was to be worn for the first time. Imre was pleased to be facetious. "You ought to go into the tailoring-line yourself," he observed... "then you can adorn yourself as pertectly as you would wish!" I threw out some sort of a return-banter that his own carelessness as to his looks was "the pride that apes humility."
"One would really suppose", I remarked, "that you do not know why a pretty woman makes eyes at you!... Are you under the impression that you are admired on account of the Three Christian Graces and the Four Theological Virtues?—all on sight! Come now, my dear fellow, you really need not carry the pose so far!"
Imre opened his lips as if about to say some thing or other; and then made no remark. Once more he gave me the idea that he was minded to speak, but hesitated. So I suspended operations with my hairbrushes.
"You appear to be labouring with a remarkably difficult idea," said I.
​He answered abruptly: "There are some things it is hard for a man to judge of, even in another fellow... at least people say so. See here, you! I wish... I wish you would tell me something.... you won't think me a conceited ass? Do you... for instance... do you... find me really specially good-looking... when you look around the lot of other men one sees.... in comparison with plenty of others, I mean?"
«Do you want an answer in chaff, or seriously?»
«Seriously.
«I most certainly think you 'specially' such. N....»
«And you are of the opinion that most people... women... men... sculptors, for instance, or painters... a photographer, if you life.... ought to be of your opinion?»
«But yes, assuredly,» I replied, laughing at what seemed the naiveté and uncalled-for earnestness in his tone. "You do not need to put me on oath, such a newcomer, too, into ​your society, to give you the conviction. Or, stay . . . how would you like me to draft you a kind of technical schedule, my dear fellow, stating how and why you are—not repulsive? I could give it to you, if I thought it would be good for you, and if you would listen to it. For you are one of those lucky ones in the world whose good-looks can be demonstrated, categorically, so to say—trait by trait—passport-style. Come, come, N—! Don't be so depressed because you are so beautiful! Cheer up! Probably there will always be somebody in the wide world who will not care to bestow even an half-eye on you! . . . some being who remains, first and last, totally unimpressed, brutally unmoved, by all your manly charms! I dare say that if you consult that individual you will be assured that you are the most ordinary-looking creature in creation."
As I spoke, Imre who had been sitting, three-quarters turned from me, over at a window, whisked himself about quickly and gave me what I thought was a most inexplicable look. "Have I offended him?" I asked ​myself; ridiculous to me, even at at so early a stage of our intimacy, as was the notion. But I saw that his look was not one of surprised irritation. It was not one of dissent. He continued looking at me . . . ah, his serious eyes! . . . whatever else he was seeing in his perturbed mind.
"Well", I continued, "isn't that probable? Have I made you angry by hinting at such a stupidity . . . . such an aesthetic tragedy?"
"No, no," he returned hastily,—"of course not!" And then with a laugh as curious as that look of his, for it was not his real, his cheerful and heart-glad laugh, but one that rang false even to being ill-humored, he added . . . "By God, you have spoken the truth! Yes, to the dot on the i!"
I did not pursue the subject. I saw that it was one, whatever else was part of it, that was better left for Imre himself to take up at some other time; or not at all. Apparently, I had stumbled on one little romance; possibly on a grande passion! In either case it was a matter not dead, if moribund it might be. ​Imre could open himself to me thereon, or not: I was not curious, nor a purveyor of reading-matter to fashionable London journals.
Two matters more in this diagnosis . . . shall I call it so? . . . of my friend. Let me rather say that it is a memorandum and guidebook of Imres' emotional topography.
Something has been said of the spontaneous warmth of his temperament, and of his enthusiasm for his closer friends. But his undemonstrativeness also mentioned, seemed to me more and more curiously accentuated. Imre might have been an Englishman, if it came to outward signs of his innermost feelings. He neither embraced, kissed, caressed nor what else his friends; and, as I had surmised, when first being with him and them, he did not appear to like what in his part of the world are ordinary degrees of 'demonstrativeness'. He never invited nor returned (to speak as Brutus)—"the shows of love in other men". There was a certain captain in the A . . . . Regiment, a man that Imre much liked and, what is more, had more than ​once admired in good set terms, when with me. ("He is as beautiful as a statue, I think!") This brother-soldier being suddenly returned to Szent-Istvánhely, after a couple of years of absence, hurried up to Imre and fairly threw his arms about him. Imre was cordiality itself. But after Captain R.... had left him, Imre made a wry face at me, and said... "The best fellow in the world! and generally speaking, most rational! But I do wish he had forgotten to kiss men! It is so hideously womanish!" Another time we were talking of letters between intimate friends. "I hate... I absolutely hate... to write letters, even to my nearest friends", he protested, "in fact, I never write unless there is no getting-out of it! Five words on a post-card, once a month or so... two or three months, maybe... and lucky if they get that! How do I write? Something like this... "I am here and well. How are you. We are very busy. I saw your cousin, Csodaszép Kisasszony yesterday. No time to-day for more! Kindest regards. Alá szolgája! N....". Now there you have my style ​to a dot. What more in the world is really called-for? As for sentiment... sentiment! in letters to my friends!... well, I simply cannot squeeze that out, or in. Nobody need expect it from your most obedient servant! My correspondence is like telegrams."
"Thanks much," I returned, smiling, "your remarks are most timely, considering that you and I have agreed to keep in touch with each other by post, after I leave here. Forewarned is forearmed! Might I ask, by the by, whether you are as laconic in writing, to—say, your friend Karvaly, over there in China? And if he is satisfied?"
"Karvaly? Certainly. He happens to like precisely that sort of communications particularly well. I never give him ten words where five will do." To which statement I retorted that it was a vast blessing that some persons were easily pleased, as well as so likeminded; and that perhaps it would be quite as wise under such conditions, not to write at all; except maybe on All-Souls Day!
"Perhaps," assented Imre.
​So much, then, of your outward individuality and environment, with somewhat of your inner self, my dear Imre!... chiefly as I looked upon you and strove to sum you up during those first days. But was there not one thing more, one most special point of personal interest?.. of peculiar solicitude?.. one supreme undercurrent of query and wondering in my mind, as we were thus thrown together, and as I felt my thoughts more and more busied with what was our mutual liking and instinctive trust? Surely there was! I should find myself turning aside from the path of straightest truth which I would hold-to in these pages, if I did not find that question written down early and frankly here, with the rest. It must be written; or be this record broken now and here!
Was Imre von N... what is called among psychiaters of our day, an homosexual? an Urning?—in his instincts and feelings and life?—in his psychic and physical attitude toward women and men? Was he an Uranian? Or was he sexually entirely normal and Dionian? Or, ​a blend of the two types, a Dionian-Uranian? Or what, . . . or what not? For that something of a special sexual attitude, hidden, instinctive, was maintained by him, no matter what might be the outward conduct of his life—this I could not help believing, at least at times.
Uranian? Similisexual? Homosexual? Dionian?
Profound and often all too oppressive, even terrible, can be the significance of those cold psychic-sexual terms to the man who . . . . "knows." To the man who "knows!" Even more terrible to those who understand them not, may be the human natures of which they are but new and clumsy technical symbols, the mere labels of psychiatric study, within a few decades of medical explorers.
What, then, was my new friend?
I could not determine! The more I reflected, the less I perceived. It is so easy to be deceived by just such a mingling of psychic and physic and temperamental traits; easy to dismiss too readily the counterbalancing qualities. I had learned that much. Long before now, I had found it ​out as a practical psychiater, in my own interests and necessities, by painful experience. Precisely how suggestive, and yet how adverse... where quite vaguely?.. where with a fairly clear accent?.. was inference in Imre's case to be drawn or thrown aside, those who are intelligent in the subtle problems of Uranianism or its absence, can appreciate best. I had been a good deal struck with the passionate—as it seemed—note in Imre's friendship for the absentee, Karvaly Mihály. I noticed the dominance that men, simply as men, seemed to maintain in Imre's daily life and ideals. I studied his reserved relations toward the other sex; the general scope of his tastes, likes and dislikes, his emotional constitution. But all these suffice not to prove... to prove... the deeply-buried mystery of a heart's uranistic impulses, the mingling in the firm, manly nature of another inborn sexual essence which can be mercifully dormant; or can wax unquiet even to a whole life's unbroken anguish!...
And, after all, why should I... I... seek to drag out from him such a secret of his indi​viduality? Was that for me? Hardly, even if I, probably, of all those who now stood near to Imre von N.... But there! I had no right! Even if I..... But there! I swore to myself that I had no wish!
It was Imre himself who gave me a sort of determinative, just as—after the oaths at which Jove laughs—I was querying with myself what I might do believe.
One evening, we were walking home, after an hour or so with his father and mother. As we turned the corner of a certain brilliantly lighted café, a man of perhaps forty years, with the unmistakeable suggestion of a soldier about him, and of much distinction of person along with it, but in civilian's dress, came out and passed us. He looked at Imre as if almost startled. Then he bowed. Imre returned his salutation with so particular a coldness, an immediate change of expression, that I noticed it.
«Who is he?» I asked. «Somehow I fancy he is not in your best books.»
«No, I can't say that he is,» responded Imre. After a moment of silence he went on. ​«That gentleman used to be a captain in our regiment. He was asked to leave the service. So he left it—about three years ago.»
«Why?»
«On account of...» here Imre's voice took on a most disagreeable sneer.. "of a little love-affair."
«Really? Since when was a little love-affair a topic for the action of a regimental Ehrenrath?»
«It happened to be his little love-affair with a.... cadet. You understand?»
«Ah, yes, now I understand. A great scandal, I presume?»
«Scarcely any at all. In fact, nobody, to this day, knows how far the... intimacy really went. But gradually some sort of a story got about... as to the discovery of "relations"... perhaps really amounting to only a trifling incident... But, the man's character was smirched. The regiment's Council didn't go into details ... didn't even ask for the facts. He simply was requested privately to give up his charge. You know, or perhaps you do not know, how spec​ially sensitive... indeed implacable.. the Service is on that topic. Anything but a hint of it! There musn't be a suspicion, a breath! One is simply ruined!»
I stopped to pay our tolls for the long Suspension Bridge. As we pursued our walk, Imre said:
«Do you have any such affairs in England?»
«Yes. Certainly.»
«Yes.»
«In military life?»
«In military and civil life. In every kind of life.»
«Indeed. And.. how do you understand that sort of thing?»
«What sort of thing?»
«A... a man's feeling that way for another man? What's the explanation?—the excuse for it!
«Oh, I don't pretend to understand it. There are things we would better not try to understand...»
Ah, had I only finished that the sentence as I certainly meant to do in beginning it!... with some such words as "—so much as ​often to pardon." But the sentence remained open; and I now that it sounded as if it was meant to end with some such phrase as ... because they are so beyond any understanding, beyond any excuse!»
Imre walked on beside me, whistling softly. Just two or three notes, over and over, no tune. Then he remarked abruptly:
«Did you ever happen to meet with... that sort a man... person... yourself... in your own circle of friends?»
Again the small detail, this time one of comission, not omission, on my part! Through it this narrative is, I suspect, twice as long as otherwise it would have been. 'Did I ever know such a man... a 'person',... in my own circle of friends?' Irony could no farther go! I laughed, not in mirth, not in contempt, but in sheer bitterness of retrospect. There are instants when it may be said of other men than Cassius:
«And when he smiles, he smiles in such a sort As if he mocked himself...»
​Yes, I laughed. And unfortunately Imre von N... thought that I sneered; that I sneered at my fellow-men!
«Yes,» I replied, «I knew such a man, such a 'person.' On the whole, pretty well. He had other rather acceptable qualities, you see; so I didn't allow myself to be too much stirred up by... that remarkably queer one.»
«Lately?» Imre asked.
«Oh, yes, very lately» I returned flippantly.
Imre spoke no word for several steps. Then, hesitatingly...
«Perhaps you didn't know him quite as thoroughly as you supposed. Were you quite sure?»
«Quite sure.» Then, sharply in another sentence that was uttered on impulse and with more of the equivocal in it which afterward I understood, I added. «I think we will not talk any more about him: I mean in that respect... Imre.»
Again silence. One—two, one—two—on we went, step and step, over the resonant, deserted bridge. I had an impression that Imre turned ​his head, looking sharply at me in the fluttering gas-light... then glancing quickly away. I had other thoughts, far, far removed from him! I had well-nigh forgot when I was!—forgot him, forgot Szent-Istvánhely........!
But now he laughed out, too, as if in angry derision.
«I say! I knew such a fellow, too.. two or three years ago. And I beg to tell you that he fell in love with.. me! No less! He was absolutely hódult over your humble servant. Did you ever!»
«Really? What did you do? Slap his face, and give him the address of a... doctor of nervous diseases?»
«Oh, Lord, no! I merely declined with thanks the.... honour of his farther acquaintance. I told him never to speak me. He left town. I had rather liked him. But I heard he had been compromised already. I have no use for that particular brand of fool!»
Are there perverse demons, demons delighting to make mortal men blunderers in simplest ​word and action... that haunt the breeze Lánczhid in Szent-Istvánhely? If so, some of us would better cross that long bridge in haste and solitary silence after nightfall. For:
«You surprise me,» I said lightly. I was thinking of one of his own jests as well of his unbelief in his personal attractions. «How inconsistent for you! Now you are just the very individual I should suspect!...... yes, yes, I am surprised!»
To my astonishment, Imre stopped full in his steps, drew himself up, and faced me with instant formality.
«Will you be so good as to tell me why you are surprised?» asked he, in a tone that was—I will not write sharp, but which suggested to me immediately that I had spoken mal-à-propos or misleadingly; the more so in view of what Imre had mentioned of his ex professio and personal sensitiveness to the general topic. "Do you observe anything particularly womanish—abnormal—about me, if you please?"
Now, as it happened my remark, as I have ​said, was made in consequence of an impersonal and amusing incident, which I had supposed Imre would at once remember.
"Womanish? Abnormal? Certainly not, But you seen to forget what you yourself said to Captain Molton this afternoon... in the billiard-room... about the menage-cooks... don't you remember?"
Imre burst into laughter. He remembered! (There is no need of my writing out here a piece of humour not transferable with the least esprit into English, though mighty funny in Magyar.) His mood changed at once. He took my arm, a rare attention from him, and we said no more till the Bridge was past, and the corner which divided our lodgings by a street's breadth was reached. We said "Good-night!... till tomorrow!" ... the házmester opened his door. Imre waved his hand gaily and vanished.
I got to bed, concluding among other things that so far from Imre's being homosexual—as Uranian, or Dionian-Uranian, or Uranian-Dionian... or what else of that kind of juggling ​terminology in homosexual analysis—my friend was no sort of an Uranistic example at all No! he was, instead, a thorough-going Dionian, whatever the fine fusions of his sensitive and complex nature! A complete Dionian, capable of warm friendship, yes—but a man to whom warm, even passionate, friendship with this or that other man never could transform itself into the bitter and burning mystery of Uranistic Love,—the fittest names for which so often should be written Torment, Shame, and Despair!
Fortunate Imre! Yet, as I said so to myself, altruistically glad for his sake, I sighed . . . and surely that night I thought long, long thoughts till I finally slept.
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