“Such a lot of gingerbread,” said one of the ladies.
“It is traditional,” explained one of the men.
There is a spirit in this man; whatever did that mean?
The air grew rather hot, but there in the shady grove it stayed cool. Now and then a breeze brought wafts of resin from the pines round about. “Look what I’ve got on my shoe,” a young girl whimpered. Her mother made an exclamation of disgust, said that there must be a dog around. One of the guests laughed.
“Not at all,” he said. “It is merely some old gingerbread. And the rain and dew have made it soggy. People come here all the time. And every time, they bring gingerbread.”
Eszterhazy said, “I don’t wonder, it is such good gingerbread. I only wonder that so much of it seems to be lying around, instead of having been all eaten up. Why is that?”
The same man said, “It is traditional.” And then, with a gesture, he said, “Look!”
Some distance away the employees of the Inn were also eating. While they watched, the blackbearded coachman took up his piece of gingerbread, broke off a piece, placed it on the ground, straightened up, began to eat the rest. “Why?” asked a lady. And, “Yes, why? Ask him why, do,” said the other ladies.
The same man raised his voice, called out, “Hoy, Coachie!” in his citified Avar. “Why do you put a piece of such good gingerbread on the ground to get mucked about? Are you feeding the stoats and the fieldmice?”
It took a while for “Coachie” to understand. Then, with an obvious intention to be respectful, he made an obvious attempt to answer. But he felt awkward; the words stuck in his throat; he made gestures; finally, in a voice too low to carry, he said a word or two in the rustic dialect to the woman serving as waitress. She nodded, walked back to the picnickers, curtseyed. “If it do please Your Honors, Ferri he say it be the custom.”
This would not do. Not altogether. A woman asked, Why was it the custom? Another demanded to be told. What did the custom mean? “Coachie,” not prepared to deal with the recondite matters, scratched his head, scratched his chin, had begun to scratch his armpits: stopped, under some dim apprehension that this was a gesture not socially accepted on all levels of society. All he had wanted to do, really, was drive his coach, tend his horses, eat his victuals, and leave a piece of his gingerbread in the grasses where bloomed the blue cornflower and where the blue chicory blossom blew. And while he thus floundered, the man who had first addressed him, perhaps from pity, perhaps from condescension, said, “Ah, the peasantry, they have their own lot of customs sure enough; for example, when the man comes in from his work, he —” His mouth continued to move but his voice had quite stopped; he grew very red in the face: Eszterhazy, whose own sympathy for the coachman had begun to be aroused, now transferred it to the nearer and more immediately necessitous.
“My legs are stiff from riding and then sitting,” said Eszterhazy, getting up awkwardly enough to lend credence to his remark. “A brisk walk is what they need; will you come along for a walk with me, my dear sir? — and point out things to me?”
The man scrambled to his feet, brushed his legs. “Love to,” he muttered, avoiding eyes. “Love, love to . . . love to. . . .”
When they were off by themselves, hot sun breathing down, the odor of grass replacing that of leaves and resin and sap, Eszterhazy said, “Well, now, you have aroused my curiosity —” He paused.
“Hanszlo Horvath. I know yours. Lord Professor Doctor Eszterhazy.”
“I am pleased to meet you, sir. And, oh, simply ‘Dr. Eszterhazy’ I have never been ‘Lord,’ my grandfather, yes; not I. And, really, never ‘Professor,’ either, though I have taught a class or two. Well, now, but what is it that the peasant man does when he comes in from his work?”
Horvath guffawed. “Well, then the woman pulls off his boots. And he breaks wind. And she says, ‘Be glad for good health.’ Ho ho ho!”
“Ha ha ha!”
“Huh huh huh! Well! So you see, sir. One could hardly tell that story in mixed company among the gentry.”
“No, no. Certainly not.” Among the gentry, no. And among the aristocracy? Certainly. Well, never mind. “What is that large building there? — down over there? I don’t remember it from my last visit, a few years ago.” Hanszlo Horvath said, which one? that one? (There was only one in sight.) Ah. That one. That was the new mill. The new mill? Yes. Some very clever chap from Bella, an engineer chap, had put it up. A faint bell rang in his companion’s head. “After all and why not?” declaimed Horvath, his voice ringing and echoing in the gorge down the sides of which they made their way on the old track, half-trail, half-stairs. “Why should all those things be found in Russia and Prussia, why shouldn’t we have them here, too?” He gestured. Following the movement, Eszterhazy saw a newly- painted sign. Great Tuned Harmonic Turbine and Compressed-Air Engine Industrial and Manufacturing Association, Stg. Sure enough. Stg. This was the latest attempt to get Scythia-Pannoina-Transbalkania into the ranks of modern commerce; Stg. was the equivalent of Inc., of Ltd., of Pty., and it stood for Stockholding.
“Sure enough. Well. Horvath, shall we go and have a look?”
“Might’s well,” said Horvath. “ ‘Be glad for good health!’ ha ha!”
The tuned harmonic etc. water-power plant was now established, and a factory with ample space had now been established, too. Ample . . . and empty, too. What was to be done with it? What use to be made of it? Brozz was with difficulty brought to bring his mind to bear upon this problem, and, indeed, could not easily recognize it as a problem at all. He would have been immensely content simply to watch his engines enginating all the day long, without other consideration. But it had all, after all, been brought into being by a Syndicate largely commercial in nature, and the commercial members of the Syndicate (or Association) had other ideas. They had after all raised what would in other parts of the world have been a lot of money; to the Triune Monarchy — where wealth still tended to be counted in terms of acres and arpents and horses and horned cattle — it was an immense amount of money. The resources of the European industrial world had been summoned to supply the machinery; and if most of it had come from England and Scotland (most of it had), some of it had come from Prussia (none of it from Russia), Belgium, Switzerland, and Sweden. So. Set up, was it. Excellent. What next. Brozz had no idea.
Brozz had no idea, but other Stockholders had, and they brought forward one Herra Gumprecht Ruprecht, a foreign thread-spinner. Herra Gum- precht Ruprecht was in search of cheap fibre, cheap labor, cheap space, and — the possibility suddenly occurring — cheap power. The heavy-smelling Upland wool was coarse, coarse, coarse; and . . . perhaps for that reason ... it was cheap, cheap, cheap. True that for every white strand in a typical clip of fleece of Upland wool there was a grey, a yellow, a brown, and several black strands: but this was all perfectly suited to Herra Gumprecht Ruprecht’s plan, which was to supply thread to weave druggets. And druggets, laid upon the floors — not the floors of palaces or villas (well, perhaps on the floors of the servants’ quarters of palaces or villas) — and trod upon by many muddy boots, required to be no color but black. Or blackish-brown. And the darker the wool, the less needed dark dye. Dye is money. Druggets often had a cotton woof; it was now proposed to use hemp. Perhaps hemp grew in Egypt.. . America . .. India ... it also grew in Scythia- Pannonia-Transbalkania. And cotton did not.