Chapter LI: Partings

As we crossed the suspension bridge for the last time on our way from Pest on the morning of our departure, the sun had risen, but the shadows still lingered beneath the white colonnades and archways that flank the Palace Gardens. On the Danube sleepy little fishing boats were floating with sails still furled, but on the quays, men were busy unloading merchandise from the larger boats that lay alongside.

We had bidden a sorrowing adieu to our carriage the previous evening, and as we looked at it for the last time, and the remembrance of our pleasant picnics and roadside bivouacs came floating back upon the mind, we almost wept over it, for it was akin to parting with an old and valued friend.

Our last journey had tried its enfeebled constitution sorely, and looking at it we felt its work was done. It would no longer rumble along the road to the merry jingle of horses’ bells. The patches which András had sewn over the rents in its poor old hood, no longer excluded the rain; it was leaky in every pore, and the canvas in some places hanging to it in ragged filaments gave to the whole, a woebegone appearance indeed.

We were once more on our way to Fűred, there to await the departure of the Austrian Lloyd’s Steamer on the Save, and had scarcely taken our seats when we heard a plaintive voice saying in rather questionable German and still more questionable grammar,

“Would any lady or gentleman be so good as to exchange their seats and allow me to sit in this carriage? I am _so_ afraid to travel near the engine.”

Looking out of the window, I recognise the typical Englishwoman at last. There she is, arrayed in the typical brown ulster, large straw hat of the mushroom species, and green gauze veil. Nothing wanting to render the type complete.

“All right!” replied the manly voice of a Magyar seated in the farthest corner, evidently glad of an opportunity of befriending an unprotected female; “take my seat, I’ll go into the next carriage.”

She too was on her way to Fűred, having just arrived from Vienna, and we soon ascertained that she was an “unappropriated blessing,” roaming about the “wide wide world” as “unappropriated blessings” sometimes will; whilst a maid, who accompanied her in her wanderings, was seated in the next carriage with András.

The landing-place at Fűred on this occasion of our visit presented a most animated scene, and was thronged with people in gay attire. We had secured rooms some weeks previously in the same hotel, or rather boarding-house, for strictly speaking there are no hotels here; but for which it is not likely we should have found accommodation, for the little place is evidently as full as it can cram.

On the landing, amongst the loiterers who were either there to meet their friends or watch the new arrivals, we recognised the imposing form of András’s “better half,” who had come to greet her lord and master. He did not, however, appear to be so glad to meet his Katicza as husband should; on the contrary the previous evening he had presented himself with a doleful countenance, and entreated us to take him with us to Ángolország.

“How could he leave his _édes kedves_ (sweet, beloved) master and mistress?” the warm-hearted little man in his sorrow at parting with us adding another adjective to his usual form of address--“He would be our butler, our cook, our groom,” in short our everything. “He would be scarcely any expense to his _édes kedves uram_ and _asszonyom_,” he only wanted black bread, bacon and kurkurnty soup; and as to clothes!--he had plenty of strong, homespun _gatyák_, etc., etc., a pair of _czimák_ (top-boots) once a year was all he would need; and as he completed the category, we could not help smiling inwardly at the thought of the sensation his appearance would create amongst the English natives with his embroidered petticoats and feather-adorned cap, and with a sore heart we told the little man he must return to his Hungarian master and to the bosom of his family.

Greatly to our surprise and delight we found here the friends with whom we had stayed in the north of Hungary, and with whom in the evening we strolled down to the lake. To the right was the bold promontory of Tihany sloping its rugged cliffs into the bosom of the lake and bearing on its summit the Benedictine Monastery founded by King Andreas I. in 1055, one of the very earliest Christian institutions established in this country.

These Benedictines are said to have been the chief agents in the conversion to Christianity of the heathen hordes who fixed their abode on the Alfőld in the 9th century. The breeze blowing from the south-west wafts over the still, blue waters the distant and plaintive sound of the monastery bell, as it tolls the _Ave Maria_, calling up within us a feeling of deep reverence for the descendants of the first preachers of the cross in this once heathen land. There are some, however, who ascribe the first germ of Christianity in this land to the Eastern Church and the Byzantine Greeks, many of whom it is well known were in Hungary previous to the adoption by the Magyars of the new religion. But whether the glory of Hungary’s original conversion to Christianity is due to the Benedictines or not, they were at any rate the principal means of keeping alive and spreading that faith which in various modifications is now held by all the nationalities of this vast country. It was, moreover, to the teaching of this order that the Hungarians are indebted for the first lessons in both architecture and agriculture, for, whilst instilling into their minds the doctrines of Christianity, they taught them the dignity and importance of labour, and just as we ourselves are indebted to the Benedictines for many of our beautiful churches, and the majority of our abbeys, the Hungarians owe to these early Christian monks the greatest architectural achievements their country possesses.

As we saunter along the margin of the lake the weird and banshee strains of a gipsy band reach us, which the echoes give back in muffled harmony. On calm and peaceful nights like the present, the air in this vicinity is said to resound with the enchanting songs of fairies who live in the rocky fastnesses of Tihany. How delightful to find ourselves in a land where fairies still exist! The lake also is believed to be the abode of Naiads; whilst that of Neusiedler, near Presburg, is said to contain within its watery depths whole palaces of gold and precious stones. This being a happy country where these fascinating little people abound, it might reasonably have been expected, since the gipsies had favoured us with a serenade, that they also would have turned out to bid us welcome. Possibly they did so, but our eyes, blinded by the hard, stern civilisation of the West, were not at any rate permitted to see nor our ears hear them; or we may, perhaps, have sought at too early an hour for those dissipated spirits. There is more than one superstition believed in concerning this lake, nor is it to be wondered at. There are phenomena, too, peculiar to it which give it a very eery character, one of them being that it is occasionally violently agitated without any apparent cause, and the other that in the winter the ice which covers it sometimes bursts with a loud report.

These phenomena are the more remarkable from the fact of its being so shallow, spreading itself out as it does over no less an area than four hundred square miles.

The water-drinkers were up betimes, and from earliest dawn there was such a tramping of feet in the corridor outside the door, that sleep any longer was out of the question. I wonder what particular qualities the waters are supposed to possess at that unearthly hour? Opening the window, I let in the sweet morning air. The lake is sleeping calmly below, the long line of distant shore scarcely perceptible, whilst horizon and sky are blended into one. In the marshes beyond the lake, the white vapours which hovered over them in the darkness, now rising, begin to take shape, and, separating into fleecy cones, wear the appearance of a procession of phantoms, or attendant spirits of Night, as, scarcely touching the surface of the earth, they glide away to that mysterious region where they hide themselves till evening comes again.

In spite of the earliness of the hour, a small, flat-bottomed boat comes skimming along close to the shore, filled with fishing-nets, baskets, and men, muffled up in sheepskins, their heads covered with woollen caps with long flaps to them.

A little later, and the priest is seen taking his matutinal walk. He exchanges salutations with the doctor of the bathing establishment, who stands in the portico beneath. And now the abbey bell with muffled beat again comes floating over the still air, as it summons the worthy monks to matins! How full of romance and sentiment is their cloistered dwelling, and of beauty its surroundings!

But the sun is up, and, looking like part of the morning, comes the chambermaid. Following the pretty custom of the country, she stoops and kisses my hand, and then presents a small tray on which is placed “white coffee,” the milk in some way or other being whipped to a froth.

As I sit by the open window it is amusing to watch the people pass. All little Fűred is astir by this time, and an important-looking personage comes stalking along, followed by a dog. His figure, pompous and comfortable, is enveloped in a long cloak lined with some beautiful fur resembling sable, which sways backwards and forwards, with the regularity of a pendulum. He is evidently a person of distinction, the _polgár mester_ (mayor) probably or _biró_ of Dorf-Fűred, a village not far distant. Coming from an opposite direction is another, but somewhat less pompous individual, also accompanied by his own particular quadruped. They meet and exchange salutations in the most elaborate and approved method of the Hungarian period; they begin talking confidently, on municipal matters probably, or more likely still the condition of the dykes, a much vexed question at the present time, and a source of never-ending dispute and clamour amongst the various municipalities of the kingdom.

Presently, after a quarter of an hour has elapsed, the colloquy apparently draws to a close; they bestow upon each other a parting benediction, at which the dogs--without so much as raising their heads--open their eyes drowsily and then close them again. They know by experience there are many last words to be said before the real farewell is taken, and they are perfectly right. The disputants separate, and walk in contrary directions, but only to turn back and resume the argument for awhile, and then repeat the ceremony of leave-taking. The whole process has been gone through many times, when there comes at length a peculiar flourish of the walking stick, and a wave of the hand indicative of the conclusion of the whole matter, upon which the dogs jump up in an instant, and follow the heels of their respective masters.

Another lovely day, of which we make the most--for the summer heats are passing and the rains of autumn will soon be here--tempts us to make an excursion to the monastery of _Sacer Mons Pannoniæ_, the chief monastic institution of the country, dedicated to St. Martin, and erected, so it is said, on the precise spot on which the dwelling of the parents of St. Martin stood.

There would, however, appear to have been some slight confusion in the minds of historians concerning the birth-place of this charitable and amiable saint, a manuscript in the library of the monastery itself declaring him to have been born in a town at the _foot_ of the hill; whereas his biographer and disciple Sulpicius Severus contends that he was born in a district more remote, namely, at a place called in the present day Steinamanger.

Whatever place may have had the honour of giving him birth, here at any rate he dwelt in manhood, and although born of heathen parents and having entered the Roman army, he became a soldier of the cross, and fighting against Arianism, which was rife in Pannonia in the 4th century, became in the reign of Constantine the Great the light of the Western Church.

The monastery is situated on the spur of a mountain which forms one of the chain enclosing the Hungarian plains to the west, and beneath which lie the forests of Bakony, of unenviable notoriety as the hiding place of Hungarian brigands.

Hither come swarms of pilgrims weak in the knees and otherwise shaky in the lower extremities, hobbling up the steep hill-side, to sit and shiver in a marble chair contained in a crypt beneath the abbey, and in which the Saint is said to have sat during mass. To recline in this chair with a minimum of clothing is said to be a cure for rheumatism--probably acting on the homœopathic principle “Like cures like;” a remedy that even rivals the baths of Fűred, and moreover possesses the additional advantage of being gratuitous.

The present monastery is the third which has been erected on this site, the first having been destroyed by the Pagans, the secret warfare that had been going on between Christianity and Paganism during the reign of King András I., having come to an open rebellion in that of King Béla. The second was demolished by the Turks; whilst the one now standing is interesting as having been built by the Abbot Urias who made himself so conspicuous in the “Holy War.”

In addition to the statue of the patron saint, who as usual is represented in the act of giving his mantle to the beggar, the church contains two others of Hungary’s mediæval kings, both of whom were canonised by the Pope, viz., St. Stephen, and St. Ladislaus.

Our last day at Fűred has also come, and, like all things pleasant, far too speedily. We have bid a sorrowful adieu to our honest little guide, who with his belongings has gone back to his master, taking with him a substantial token of our appreciation of his services, and we are only waiting the steamer’s signal to cross the lake on our way to Croatia ere we turn our backs upon the classic land of Attila and Árpád and bend our steps towards the region of the setting sun.

The service at the hotel was charged for on the bill, and I need scarcely say paid for also; but who could resist giving a _douceur_ to the bright-eyed chambermaid who kissed our hands when she brought our white coffee every morning, and who happens to be brushing away an imaginary cobweb just outside our bedroom door as we make our exit, and looking up so sweetly, wishes us a pleasant journey;--or the civil waiter who happens to be in the middle of the stairs and who wishes us a speedy return;--or the porters who pant so exceedingly, as they carry our luggage down to the steamer and stand mopping their faces with their large full white sleeves;--or the boots, who helps to stow it away;--or the shoes, or in short anybody, and everybody--who, I ask, could resist the bestowal of a few kreuzers upon these civil people as they shower _lebewohls_ and _auf wiedersehens_ upon us as we depart? We at any rate are not of those strong-minded children of men.