The old pieces of furniture moved from their places, as clumsily, painfully, as old people move from their accustomed corners. Below, in front of the house, rattling furniture vans stopped now and then.
Anne looked out of the window. Barefooted, sweating men carried the piano out of the door. The pampered household gods stood piled up in a heap in the middle of the pavement, amidst the crowd of the street. A man sat on the music chest. Christopher’s old desk lay upside down on top of the chest of drawers, just like a dead animal, its four legs up in the air.
In these days, Thomas travelled repeatedly from home, for he wanted himself to supervise the placing of the furniture of the old house in the manor house of Ille.
The boys were made noisy by their expectation of new and unknown things. They spoke of Ille as if it were the realization of a fairy tale—a fairy tale told by their father.
“They don’t cling to the old house,” thought Anne and felt lonely. She liked best to be by herself. Then her imagination restored everything to its old place in the dismantled rooms. The shapes of the furniture were visible on the wall papers. The forsaken nails stretched out of the walls like fingers asking for something. In the place of Mrs. Christina’s portrait a weary shadow looked like a faded memory.
Another piece of furniture disappeared, then another.... The writing-table with many drawers remained alone in the green room. Anne drew the drawers out one by one. One contained some embroideries made in cross-stitch. How ugly and sweet they were! She remembered them well, she had made them for her grandfather. Then some clumsy old drawings came into her hands, quaint castles, girls, big-eared cats; two silvery, fair curls, in a paper, tied together; beneath them an old distant date in her grandfather’s faded writing.
Whenever the clock struck she started and touched her forehead as if it had struck her to hurry her on.
In another drawer she found a diploma of the Freedom of the Royal Free City of Pest and a worn little book. On its cover a two-headed eagle held the arms of Hungary between its claws.
... Pozsony. A. D. 1797, Christopher Ulwing ... civil carpenter....
While she turned the pages a faint, mouldy odour fanned her face. Her memory searched hesitatingly: