All lies.... But lies are like a bridge without banks to support it, which must break down....
The friend who had warned me before of impending peril came again. He entered cautiously and looked round continually while he was speaking.
“Look out,” he said in a whisper. “Give up all your activities, give up this organising; you are being watched with grave suspicion. It would be a pity if they took you. I like your books: you will still be able to go on writing beautiful things if you take care. But you won’t if you go on like this. There are many of us who would dig you out of a grave with their bare hands, but they will get you into one. Joseph Pogány said yesterday ‘We will settle Cécile Tormay’s little business.’”
I thanked him for the advice, knowing all the time that I should not follow it. Destiny decides people’s fate when it puts patriotism into their hearts. The more of it it gives, the harder their fate.
In the evening I overheard from my room a curious conversation on the telephone. Our housekeeper was telephoning to her fiancé, who, she tells me, is a chauffeur. She is a good-looking woman, and in January she left our service over a question of wages, but a short time later asked to be taken back, although we could only raise her salary slightly. At the time I didn’t see anything very remarkable in that; but since I have heard this conversation over the telephone I have begun to wonder what her reason for coming back could be. This is what she said:
“Hello, hello, is that you? Back again? No engine trouble? Yes. In Kiskúnhalas too!... And you took many arms, machine guns too? Did you catch them? Officers, you say?”
I was rather alarmed. So they had captured one of the arsenals which the counter-revolution had established in the country. I feared for the safety of the others. Only later did I think of ourselves. Who was this woman’s fiancé? Whose chauffeur was he? My suspicions were aroused. But the time when one can dismiss a servant is past, unless it be the servant’s good pleasure to go. I remembered letters I had asked her to post, which never reached their destination. I also remembered that whenever I receive visitors she crosses the ante-room as if accidentally. Is it accidental? I must watch her.... As I stood pondering she came and stood in the doorway with a letter in her hand.
“It’s very confidential,” she said, looking at me rather queerly. “The man who brought it wanted to deliver it into your own hands only.”
“Some beggar, I suppose” ... I replied indifferently; but I could see that she did not believe me.
The envelope contained an invitation. To-morrow afternoon Count Stephen Bethlen’s party will be formed at last.