Soon they rose to go with the exception of Gömbös.
“It has been decided by the others,” he said, “that none of you will flee. They only send me.... I shall help from abroad.”
We fixed up everything. Gömbös rose, took his society’s badge from his button-hole: an oak wreath on white ground with ‘For the honour of our country’ on it, and handed it to me. “Take this as a souvenir, nobody has a better right to wear it than you.”
“God bless you; if we live I am sure we shall hear of you,” I said at the door.
They left me and I heard the street door shut. I wondered whether anyone was lying in wait for him, down there in the dark, and listened for a time at the window, but the steps went undisturbed down the street.
I went to my mother. I don’t remember ever having seen her so excited. “Now why don’t you tell me?” she cried. “I know that something has happened.”
“Gömbös came to take leave; he is flying the country.”
I changed the subject as soon as possible. We chatted a long time and by and by she calmed down. Or did she only pretend, for my sake? No, she never showed anything but what she felt.
Slowly the clocks struck midnight. And here I am sitting at my writing-table and, instead of imagining destinies, am occupied by my own. Who knows whether I shall still be free to write to-morrow what I leave unwritten to-day?
I packed the most necessary things into a small valise. Again the clocks struck: they are knocking at the gate of the morrow.