"I don't care a bit, for I mean to drive the horses myself."
"Oh, that I will not allow," said Henrietta. "It is no joke to hold the reins, for hours at a stretch, on bad roads."
"I do it because I like it, your ladyship. You know I love my pipe, and how can I smoke it in a covered carriage?"
Shortly afterwards Mr. Gerzson asked leave to go out and inspect the coach and the coachman, and after closely investigating everything and wrangling a little with the coachman, purely from traditional habit, just to show the fellow that he understood all about it, he ascended to the drawing-room again and announced that the horses had been put to.
Hátszegi helped his wife to adjust her mantle over her shoulders, and impressed a cold kiss upon her forehead. Henrietta once more thanked him warmly for being so good to her and allowed Mr. Gerzson to escort her down the steps. The old gentleman, however, would not allow himself to be persuaded to take his place in the carriage by her side. His hands itched to hold the reins and he would, he said, be sure to go to sleep and make himself a nuisance if he sat inside. So he had his way, and indeed in all the Hungarian plain a more adroit and careful driver could not have been found.
Gradually the night began to die away and the sky began to grow lighter behind the mountains of Bihar, which they had now left behind them. The smaller stars vanished in groups before the brightening twilight; only the larger constellations still sparkled through the dawn. Presently a hue of burning pink lit up the sky and long straight strips of cloud swam, like golden ribbons, before the rising sun whose increasing radiance already lit up the broad cupolas of the dark mountains. Before the travellers extended the endless plain of the Alföld,[36] like a bridge rising from her bed to greet her beloved Lord, the Sun.
[36] The great Hungarian plain.
On Mr. Gerzson, however, the romantic spectacle of sunrise on the puszta produced no romantic impression whatsoever. He neither observed the golden clouds in the sky, nor the dappled shadows flitting across the dewy fields, nor the lilac-coloured nebulous horizon. He saw none of these things, I say, but he saw something else which did not please him at all.
"I say, Joska, the right leader is limping."
"Yes, it certainly is," replied the coachman.