But Anne did not forget that look, when her father came up from his office. Thomas Illey spoke to John Hubert only, who sat just as solemnly on the thin-legged flowered chair as he did long ago besides the Septemvir Bajmoczy in the drawing-room of Baroness Geramb.
They spoke of the city. Of new railways. Steamers for the Danube. Building. Politics.
Anne did not understand much of this. In the Ulwing family national politics only meant a good or bad business year. They were considered a means or an obstruction, whereas to Illey they seemed interesting for their own sake.
His sparse, tense speech became voluble.
“In vain they trample on us, in vain they throttle us,” he said and his expression became hard. “The great freedom of the nomads is the ancestral home of my race. We sprang from that. It cannot be forgotten....”
Anne looked at him intensely and while she listened distant memories came slowly from the twilight of her mind. Grandfather Jörg’s former shop, feverish men and the mysterious powerful voice which, unintelligible, had once carried her soul for a cause she could not understand. Now it seemed to her that Thomas Illey gave words to the voice and that she began to understand events of her childhood.
John Hubert too followed Illey’s word attentively and thought of his father, Ulwing the builder. What he had done and felt for the town, Illey felt for the country and would like to do for the whole country. How was that possible?
He smiled soberly. “They are all the same, the Hungarian gentry. Every one of them wants to save the whole country, yet if each of them grappled with a small part of it, they would achieve more.” He criticised his guest quietly within himself, yet listened to him with pleasure, because his words roused confidence and his thoughts could find support in the power of words.
“Do you really think it is possible that our economic life should ever revive again?” John Hubert was now thinking of his business only. He spoke of the price of timber, building material and labour conditions.
Martha smiled absent-mindedly in the corner of the flowered couch. Christopher interrupted nervously but his father did not heed him.