Humbug Hall

For Frank Brown
and F. A. Voigt
gratefully

Author’s Note: All the characters in this work are fictitious.

The birds still sang, it seemed. In spite of everything, round this house of all houses, they still chorused their happy cheerful nonsense. Blackbirds, thrushes, sparrows, finches, wrens—all the birds of a London garden—they saluted the first flush of the July morning. Even a pair of wood-pigeons had come over from Ken Wood to Highgate to join the celebrations; they were fondly delighted with themselves and with their times and places. “Croo-oo-oo,” they said in imbecile content, “Croo-oo-oo-oo.”

Yes, the birds still sang—confound them . . . One took aspirin, one took vegenin, one took little flat fizzing tablets of triple bromide; and of course they were all totally ineffective. One lay and lay, sometimes tossing, sometimes rigid; and the last faint traffics of North Hill on the one side and Hampstead Lane on the other dwindled to a final calm; and that very heavy goods train gasped its way up the hill from the railway station and into the tunnel; and there was a semblance of quiet that would last till the clop-clop of the milk-carts started. One thought, “At last, at last, I could sleep a little.” And then—a lightness at the window; and outside, this concerted paean of heartiness, this uproar, this hurroosh.

“Dawn! Dawn! Dawn!” they cried, the silly confident little creatures. “Here-has-been Dawn-ing-an Oth-er-blue Day; Think-wilt-thou Let-it-slip—” Triumphant dactyls; a song at morning; jubilee, jubilee. Te Deum Laudamus . . .

Sylvia thought, I know it’s dawn. And whether this day is blue or any other colour, I know it is the start of a new life. Which will be utterly new and different, and almost certainly objectionable. There will be no Cesar in it and no Basil; that is to say, there will be no Daddy in it and no Sweetheart. (Silly sentimental words, but so comforting; such a blank their absence will make.) “You must keep up your courage, Sylvia.” “You must put a good face on it.” “You must make a fresh start.” I don’t want to make a fresh start. No Daddy; no Basil. I don’t want this dawn, this kick-off whistle, this starting-gun. I don’t want it.

Yet the dawn, the light, the blessed day, was better in some ways than the dark. In the nights—the long long nights of the last fortnight—terrors had walked, such terrors . . . That night, a fortnight ago, one had wakened. How had one known—now how had one known?—that one had heard a shot? How had one instantly been appraised—having then no information at all—that something completely terrible had happened? . . . One had thrown on a dressing-gown and run to that room across the landing; one had run to Cesar’s door. Locked. Listen. Knock gently. “Daddy, are you all right?” How did one know he wasn’t? Yet one did know—absolutely . . . A dead, dead silence; then—that sort of dripping sound . . . Shake the handle frantically, shriek, pound and hammer on the woodwork, shriek idiotically till Gribbie came downstairs in his shirt and trousers . . . And at last, fatally, one broke in—the panel splintering, Gribbie groping for the key inside . . .

That room across the landing, stripped now and bare, just an empty box of wood and plaster and wall-paper. Yet in the dark of the nights one was afraid of it. Something might come out of it . . . There was a face—the remains of a face—one had seen hanging upside-down over the edge of a bed, staring upwards, so far as it could stare. Not Cesar, of course—not anything or anybody one had ever known; just a Thing. That might come across the landing, try one’s door-handle, creep up to one’s bedside, look at one. Better, much better than that, these bawling birds, this excess of sunrise; better dawn, better a fresh start; better anything.

*  *  *

Yet on this July morning of the Fresh Start Sylvia did sleep—from half past four till nearly six; then, thankful for small mercies but despairing of more, she went to have her bath. The bathroom was now the least altered room in the house, the only room that hadn’t been dismantled—simply because there had been nothing in it to dismantle except Sylvia’s own necessary possessions. (Which I must now pack and take away for ever.) Daddy had had a basin with hot and cold in his own room—that room across the landing; and a little cabinet above it with a shaving mirror and concealed lighting; on very special occasions—such as, for instance, going out for an evening with Basil—Sylvia had been allowed to make up at it, and very useful it was. But there had never been anything of Daddy in the bathroom—no razors or tooth-brushes or sponges. It was all Sylvia’s—down to the long mirror at the end of it; Daddy—who was an artist, a great artist, and knew all about bodies—Daddy had said, “I don’t know that I altogether approve of young women looking at themselves in long mirrors in the altogether”; and Sylvia had told him, “I want to see myself walk; I want to see how my joints work.” Daddy had said something about Aubrey Beardsley and the Nineties, and Lord Whatsisname and black velvet sofas. But the mirror was still there; it was to “go with the house.” In it Sylvia walked once again towards Sylvia.

“. . . Sylvie, there’s something about the shape of you; it’s like wine.” Basil said that; Basil said that to me. It was at the Mayfair; dancing. I don’t know why he suddenly said it. I had a grey lace frock on; it was rather a nice frock; I suppose I am rather a nice shape. We were just getting up from our table to go on to the dance-floor; I was sort of squeezing through. He stood back and stared at me and then suddenly out it came. “Sylvie, there’s something about the shape of you; it’s like wine.” Then I think he was rather ashamed of himself, poor darling; Games Masters in English Prep Schools don’t say such things; he grabbed me up and shuffled about and didn’t say anything more for quite a while. When he did, it was all about the Keep-fit Campaign and what his boys were doing about it down at Bridstead . . . Oh, Basil! You’d have liked to see me like this; but you never will now. N.E.V.E.R.—never!

Well—into the bath; splash! Cold water—cold, clean water; Skegness is so bracing. “On the first morning of her new life our heroine, Miss Sylvia Savage, 7 Ratisbon Avenue, N.6, took a cold bath. She thus invigorated herself to meet her Cousin Lettuce after breakfast—not to mention a whole lot of other people she didn’t want to meet in the least. Her future employer, Mrs. Portia Tweed; and Family”. . . Oh, it’s all very well to joke about it . . .

Her future employer; the new life. And no more Basil—ever; because, for Basil’s good, I have to run away from Basil. Because of what happened in that room across the landing, I have to run away and hide—unfindably. Especially from Basil. So now nobody will ever see the Shape that really would have been like wine. It’s a kind of a pity . . .

Lord, I have not properly thanked Thee for so many of the kindnesses Thou hast showered upon me; but for this especial mercy I do most humbly and heartily praise Thy name—that Thou (and I’m not being irreverent because it must have been some Higher Power) didst inspire the Headmaster of Bridstead Preparatory School in Sussex, his Governors and his Directors, this year to try the experiment of staggered holidays. So that this year his summer vacation, instead of running normally from 25th July to 20th September, runs from 25th June to 20th August. So that, again, when all these horrors happened, Basil was away on his holiday in the Black Forest. And what’s more, he was away with a whole drove of his beastly little schoolboys, the Sixth Form or something; so that he couldn’t possibly rush back even if he saw anything in the papers. There he still is. If he’s wondered at not getting any letters from me, he’ll have put it down to the inefficiency of the Continental Post Office—Wops or Dagoes or Huns or something he’ll be calling them, bless his English little heart; and by the time he comes home again and finds it all out and gets the letter it won’t matter because by that time I’ll be hidden. Where he won’t find me.

But I don’t want to go! . . . Now, Sylvia!

*  *  *

Now, Sylvia—breakfast. After breakfast Cousin Lettuce is coming; she will be cool and composed and dressed in green linen and she will say for the hundredth time, “You must keep up your courage, Sylvia. You must make a fresh start.” Probably she will insist on accompanying me to the Green Line Bus. And then the new life will start in real earnest.

Meantime, breakfast. Orange-juice and toast. This is the best orange-squeezer I have ever seen and I don’t care if it belongs to the “effects” or not—I am going to take it away with me in my suitcase. I’m sure the Tweeds won’t have as good a squeezer as this one—and they shan’t have it either; I’ll keep it in my room. But I shall have to clean it myself, because there won’t be any Gribbie to do that for me. And there’s another oddness about the new life—no Gribbie.

James Augustus Gribble, for long years man-of-all-work and sole servant to Cesar Savage and his daughter Sylvia . . . He came down—that night—in his shirt and trousers, and I thought at first he was going to die too. He went flat out in a faint and I had to run for brandy and I don’t believe I’d have been able to get it into him if he hadn’t fortunately forgotten to put in his teeth. Darling Gribbie; he was a dear! . . . Was, was, was—all was’s; even Gribbie.

For the next day he came to me looking like death and he said, “Do you mind, Miss, if I go out for a bit; I’m not feelin’ too good.” And I said, “Of course, Gribbie; you’re not looking it.” And out he went; and what did he do—the poor faithful devoted ass—but take a great dose of poison just because he couldn’t bear to think there was no more Cesar Savage in the world. And of course he made a botch of it, as usual; and didn’t take enough or took the wrong stuff; and they caught him rolling on his back in Waterlow Park and they brought him round and now he’s in St. Pancras’ Hospital recovering; and when he recovers he’ll be charged with attempted suicide. . . . Attempted suicide; yes, but all attempts don’t fail. A dripping sound you heard through a locked door; a head so bent back upon its neck that it was upside down. Oh, no! no I no!

Well, anyway, when Gribbie comes out of hospital and prison, he’ll have five hundred pounds in the Bank in Savings Certificates—which is more than he ever expected or guessed. I’ve seen to that. I’m glad I gave it to him; it’s a thank-offering really because Gribbie’s been kept out of the way and I’ll be able to dodge him too and he won’t ever find me either.

The dining-room had been dismantled with thoroughness; there remained only a folding card-table and one kitchen chair. All the rest had gone off to the dealers—and a miserable offer they had made, but one had to take it because speed was of the essence of the get-away. And there remained also the big oil painting over the fireplace; Glarus was decent about that; nasty old Jew, but he let me keep it to the last. “Portrait of a Laughing Lady” it had always been called in Exhibition Catalogues and it had journeyed in its time as far as Brussels and Prague and Dresden for to be admired and for to be seen. But it was Mother really. Were they married? I don’t know—and it doesn’t matter now. I wish I’d seen her. Well, of course, I must have seen her, but I wish I could remember. She laughed nicely anyway—under that vast pre-war hat and over that high-collared dress with pearls. A pearl-coloured creature generally. Not the least like me . . . Daddy said she was dead. True? Probably; Daddy never told unnecessary lies. “For heaven’s sake, my dear good girl, learn that lying is an art; lie just as often as you’d take an injection of strychnine and only in the same desperate straits. Lies are the last resource and valuable; don’t abuse them.” But there was one thing he lied about or at any rate he kept from me; about that thing even he must have had to lie a good deal. And if it wasn’t for that thing I needn’t be running away to-day. Because—well, he had the right to kill himself, hadn’t he, if he was utterly tired of it all; no disgrace in that. But it was the reason—that’s what I can’t face. I still don’t understand it . . . What? . . . How? . . . How could he? . . . Oh, well, forget it. Perhaps these things are different when you understand them; they must be . . .

Breakfast. Orange-juice and toast; you couldn’t have a nicer. I won’t get as good toast as this at Mrs. Portia Tweed’s, Hambling Hall, Herts—unless, like this, I make it myself and I doubt if that will be part of my duties. My duties! “Here-hath-been dawning-an other-blue—Here, presently, will be dawning Cousin Lettuce. Fresh start; they’re off! I am Sylvia Savage, personal secretary to Mrs. Portia Tweed, pacifist, publicist, feminist—all the ist’s. The new life. I don’t want it, I don’t want it. Oh, God, squeeze me out as flat and as dead as this beastly orange. . . .

On the contrary, said God, I ordain—Dawn.

II

Cousin Lettuce had not, of course, been christened with a ‘u’ in her name. But the infant Sylvia, knowing naught of that Laetitia who had lurked amongst her Victorian ancestresses, identified her cousin with the salad; and as the experience of years amplified the promptings of intuition, there seemed a good deal to be said for it. Cousin was always so green and cool, so good for one and—so uninteresting. In regard to the last quality the men seemed to concur; for although she was ten years older than Sylvia she remained Miss Firjohn—a name with which Cesar Savage had frequently made merry. “Miss Lettuce Fir-john Is a congenital vir-john”—and so forth. She was the only relative he appeared to possess—though she was only a second or third cousin really at that; the Laughing Lady’s people—if any—were never heard of or appeared. On the whole, Sylvia reflected, if I must make a bolt for it, I’m well placed as regards encumbrances. Gribbie in hospital or in quod; Basil with his Prep School troupe jumping about in some remote gasthaus between Titisee and Hinterzarten; it boils down to Lettuce.

Lettuce arrived this morning before time and as anticipated—cool, composed and green-linen. In the dining-room, refusing to take off her butter-yellow hat (“We really haven’t the time, my dear.”) she looked up at the Laughing Lady.

“What have you done about that?”

“I sold it. It was mine.”

“Sold it? Who to?”

“Glarus.”

“Who’s Glarus?”

“He’s a dealer.”

“He sounds like a Jew.”

“Because he is one. What about it? There are Jews and Jews, aren’t there?”

“I don’t know; I’m sure he cheated you.”

“No, he didn’t. Glarus wouldn’t cheat me. Jew or no Jew, he wouldn’t do that. He said, ‘Ach, it is of a badness, zat picture; it is zhost blod-dee.’ But he gave me five hundred for it.” (And that’s how I got the five hundred for Gribbie; but that would be telling.)

“Five hundred pounds?”

“Well, why not? Daddy could paint, you know. A Cesar Savage is a Cesar Savage after all; even after—. . . Lettuce, were they married? You must know.”

“I don’t, my dear. It all happened in Austria or somewhere.”

“Did she die?”

“I don’t know that either. I only know she ran away from him very soon after you were born.”

“I know she did, too. Oh, Lettuce, how could she?”

“I couldn’t say.” But Lettuce thought, “If he was—that way; perhaps even in those days, perhaps already . . .” She said:

“I hope you’ve done something sensible with the five hundred pounds.”

“I put it in the Bank.” (Well, I did, didn’t I?)

“It should bring in fifteen pounds a year, you know. And you haven’t so very much.”

“I’ll have a hundred and fifty a year.”

“Is that all?”

“So they say. There were a lot of debts and things. I shall have to pay rent on this house till it’s sub-let. And Daddy had an overdraft.” (Such an overdraft.)

Cousin Lettuce thought, These men, with their revolvers and poison bottles, sneaking out and leaving poor Sylvia to it, the miserable cowards. These men! She said, sighing, that Cesar was very very extravagant. And so he had been—charmingly extravagant, a fool about money. Yet his pictures sold handsomely; there should have been more. But then, again—that business; who knew what expenses that let men in for? There may have been blackmails—all sorts of things. When you got into the underworld, and that particularly repulsive region of it. . . . She said only:

“It’s not much.”

“I can’t starve on a hundred-and-fifty. And I’ve got a job . . . Let’s talk about the job now. Sit down, Lettuce, for God’s sake and have a cigarette.”

“But—your bus.”

“There’s ages. It doesn’t go till eleven. Sit down.”

“You’re only putting off, Sylvia.”

“Well, wouldn’t you?”

Lettuce said stoutly that she wouldn’t. “It’s a very good post, they’re nice people; you ought to get on with it. Make a fresh—”

“Don’t say that again! Oh, Lettuce, you’ve been sweet to me and you’ve got me this job and all and I’m grateful, grateful; but—how can I face them?”

“You’re just being morbid, darling.”

“Well—it is morbid. There couldn’t be anything more morbid. They—they must know about the—the details.”

Lettuce thought that not worth denying. Cesar Savage had saved himself quickly but not before one or two of the papers had got hold of it. There had been a headlined paragraph: “Well-Known Artist in Court. Mr. Cesar Savage, the well-known painter, appeared yesterday at Hampstead Petty Sessions to answer to charges involving offences against . . .” “Offences under the Criminal Law Amendment Act,” another paper called it: nice and vague, but of course everyone knew. And then, of course, the suicide, prompt and significant; significant certainly, not quite prompt enough. The poorest arithmetician could make four out of a brace of two’s like that. Yes, the Tweeds must know. And how much, thought Lettuce, does Sylvia know, how much does she understand? She’s twenty-five, but then I’m thirty-five and I simply don’t know about these things and that’s the fact; and there isn’t anybody I could ask . . . Sylvia said, biting back tears, “How could he? How could anybody?”

“I don’t know, my dear. They say it’s a sort of—it’s a sort of mental—”

“I say it’s a bloody lie! I swear some beastly little boy must have been telling stories. Or his horrible mother.”

Lettuce sighed again; they had been through all this before—unprofitably. She turned to practicalities.

“You’ve just got to forget it, my dear. Make a fresh—”

“Lettuce!”

“Well, what’s wrong with that? And you’ll find the Tweeds ready and anxious to help you—that is,” she added hastily, “if they’ve really heard any—any garbled version.”

“Garbled grandmother! They’ll know.”

“Well, even if they do. They’re nice people. They’ll be kind. They’ll help you.”

Sylvia lit a fresh cigarette. “Oh—well. Tell me about them again. You got me this job; tell me what I’m in for. Who’s ‘they’? Who will be there?”

Lettuce grasped at it. “Well, Portia Tweed you’ve seen.”

“Yes; and since I saw her I’ve read her books. I think she’s a very clever woman and she’d never give away what she was thinking—never . . . What’s the husband like?”

“Pelham Tweed? He’s a civil servant; he’s in one of these Ministries—Air or Defence or Supply or something. He’s on what I think they call the permanent staff. I—I think he’s nice.”

The hesitation was not lost on Sylvia. “You only think so?”

“No, no, I’m sure he is. The only thing—long ago he had a very passionate affair with some woman and they ran away to France for a time—just a week or two—and it worried Portia very much and—”

“She lived through it. And he came back.”

“Yes, he came back. But it makes him rather miserable sometimes. He writes little poems sometimes—about clouds and things.”

“What in?”

“Oh, I don’t know. The Squire. Lilley’s Magazine. Things like that.”

“All right. I’ve got him. Daddy knew two or three creatures like that.” And then, stabbing recollection said, “Why be so hard? What about yourself? You’ve lost your love too, haven’t you?” She said, more softly, “I daresay he’ll be all right. . . She said something about children.”

“Well, hardly children. There’s a son and daughter.”

“Oh yes—the boy who’s to drive me from the bus.”

“Yes; Regulus.”

“Regulus? They do have names. I suppose they call him Reggie.”

“No, Rule.”

“Why on earth Rule?”

“I think it’s the English form of Saint Regulus.”

“Is he a Saint?”

“He’s rather religious . . . Oh, but splendid; such a manly boy.”

“I’m not too fond of manly boys. How old?”

“Let’s see.” Cousin Lettuce screwed up her forehead. “He must be between twenty and twenty-one. Yes, because he’s a year older than the daughter, Quarta. They called her Quarta, of course, because she was born on the fourth of the month.”

“Couldn’t they think of anything better than that? What month?”

“I forget—August, I think . . . Sylvia, we’ll lose that bus.”

“We’ll take a taxi and run after it. Tell me—what’s Quarta like?”

Lettuce said primly, “Not at all attractive, I fear.” Sylvia reflected that perhaps Quarta might not be so bad. Probably she suffered a good deal at the hands of the religio-manly Rule; there might be a common bond in that suffering. After all, I’m only twenty-five; she’s nineteen and if she’s seen anything—

“That bus, Sylvia.”

“All right, all right; ring up for a taxi. I don’t think they’ve cut the telephone off. It’s Mount View Double-Two Double-Five.”

Lettuce went obediently to the telephone; she was audible in the hall demanding a taxi for Seven Ratisbon Avenue; “and quickly, please, we have a train to catch.” Somewhere out in the wilds, thought Sylvia, “Regulus” is getting into the car to meet me at the bus stop—cursing over the job, no doubt. Somewhere out in the wilds are all these people—Pelham and Portia Tweed, Regulus-Rule and Quarta—with whom I must make my life at least for some time to come, whom I shall have to try to like, try to get on with—not because I have chosen them as friends but because they have chosen me as their servant. Or did they even do that? It was all Lettuce’s doing really . . . And Daddy’s dead; and Gribbie’s in St. Pancras’ Hospital and Basil—Basil’s in the Black Forest with all these horrid little brats from Bridstead and I’ll never never see him again . . .

Cousin Lettuce came bustling in to find her sprawled on the derelict card-table, her head on her arms, weeping bitterly. She threw herself on her knees, heedlessly crushing the green linen.

“Oh, Sylvia, Sylvia darling!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I meant to be brave. But one just can’t be brave. It’s all so awful.”

They clung together for a minute. Cousin Lettuce—the sole survivor, now, henceforward and for evermore.

“You’ve got the address, Lettuce?”

“Of course, darling. Hambling Hall, Herts.”

“Yes. And remember only two people in the world know it. You and Caddy at the Bank. He’s safe. Now you promise, promise, promise you’ll never give it away to anybody.”

“If you’ll promise to keep writing to me to let me know you’re all right.”

“Of course I will. And if anybody comes and asks you for the address you won’t tell them.”

“Who would come, dear?”

“Oh—anybody. Friends of Daddy’s. Old Chippendall. Glarus. Oh, anybody.”

Lettuce thought, Anybody? Anybody? Then why all the fuss? “You’re sure there isn’t anyone special, dear?”

“Of course not. Nobody.” And added with fine inconsistency, “If anybody of that kind should come, then specially, specially not.”

Lettuce said—rather creditably—that she saw. And then the taxi was at the door, ringing; and one was saying to the man—saying with miraculous calm and no trace whatever of tears,

“There’s a suit-case and a hat-box. And will you go to the Green Line stop, please, at Tally Ho Corner.”

Tally Ho Corner! There was something encouraging in the sound of that. Tally Ho, indeed!

III

Mrs. Portia Tweed’s directions for reaching Hambling Hall had been as clear and precise as you would have expected from so distinguished and capable a woman. They had been issued over the telephone—an instrument, you realised at once, that held no terrors for her at all. Telephone, microphone, dictaphone—all one; her slaves. “You will pass an inn on the left called the Green Goat. Two hundred yards beyond that there is a red signpost, a red signpost, lettered ‘Brickster and Elding.’ Tell the bus man to put you down there. My son will be waiting for you with one of our cars—mine probably; my husband takes his to office. It is a black saloon, BKL 647. We always remember it easily because it isn’t black.” Sylvia had begun, “But you just said—” when she saw and checked herself; it was the BKL that wasn’t BLacK, of course—not the colour of the car, which was. Evidently people, these, who expected one to have all one’s wits on the alert.

And “one of our cars”; that had sounded impressive—even though the fleet apparently boiled down to two, Portia’s and Pelham’s. Still—lavish. If it’s all on that scale—

The Green Goat hove in sight in its appointed place though as usual in these degenerate days its pictured sign, which should have been arresting, had given place to a mere lettered board. The Brickster and Elding signpost followed it with lightning rapidity. And then Sylvia was in the road and the Green Line bus was bowling away to the north and Regulus—or Rule?—was advancing to meet her from under the shade of the tree where he had parked BKL 647.

Rule had been there some time, having first been obliged to drive his sister Quarta to the railway station at Welwyn; he had been amusing himself in speculation as to what the new Secretary would be like. He was vaguely but not acutely interested, as he disliked girls and did not care much for women; they were secondaries, they interfered with one’s fitness and also with one’s higher thought. Moreover, experience had left him with a low expectation in the matter of his mother’s secretaries: the last three—Portia went through secretaries rapidly and was getting a bad name with the established agencies which perhaps explained why Cousin Lettuce had been able to secure the post so easily for Sylvia—the last three had been a horse-faced ex-Girtonian of forty, a Miss with pince-nez who talked endless highbrow and had a passion for Kafka, and a cropped and collared super-American of whose real sex Rule was always secretly in doubt. Thus, vaguely but hopefully interested, he looked up from his driving seat and saw standing in the road a girl, a lost-looking girl, a brown girl, a pretty girl—in that order. He saw that she was tall and slim yet rounded adequately where a girl should be; that her well-cut mourning became her; that she had a straight nose, a big good mouth, very dark brown eyes and hair. He was relieved to see—after the super-American—that her lips were but slightly and her finger-nails not at all tinted and that she wore, mainly, her own natural eyebrows. The “brown” impression came from her hair and her eyes and her cheeks, which were lightly tanned. Whether or not there were any scope here for higher thought, she certainly looked “fit.”

Sylvia in turn saw approaching her a large loose young man who seemed, at first impression, to be mainly ends and tussocks and tufts of hair—and very black hair at that. He wore no hat and it would have been difficult to estimate when his hair had last been cut; he had doubtless shaved but had left a wedge of whisker on either side that would not have disgraced a Castilian head-waiter; and he had adorned himself with a little split Hitler moustache exactly like twin shoe-brushes. The general Esau-effect was completed by the backs of his hands and by an uncompromising black triangle showing through the open front of his tennis shirt. He had large strong grim-looking teeth. Sylvia thought, “I suppose this is what Lettuce meant by ‘manly’,” and “I do think he might have put on at least a tie.” She said, with her best smile,

“I suppose you’re Regulus.”

He said, taking her suit-case, “Rule. Rule Tweed.”

“Rule Britannia!” thought Sylvia instantly. Aloud she hoped he had not been waiting long.

“A goodish while. But I had my thoughts.”

“Were they interesting?”

“Not specially.” He hurled her suit-case into the back seat of the black saloon and started the engine with considerable violence. “But any thought’s better than talk. I can’t stand chatterers.”

Sylvia, feeling snubbed, subsided. But presently, above the roar of the engine which he raced constantly by the method of keeping the clutch partially engaged, she asked if it were far to Hambling.

“Couple of miles. It’s at the back of beyond. It’s an absurd place to live, but it suits my mother. And Quashy, I suppose.”

“Who?”

“My sister. My sister Quarta.” He glanced at her sideways. “You may well stare. The name’s absurd. Why a grown woman should insist on calling herself Quashy because as a child she couldn’t or wouldn’t say Quarta—I can’t stand diminutives.”

Sylvia thought, “There are a lot of things you can’t stand, aren’t there?” and intercepted a look from under one of the more dishevelled locks of hair that almost explicitly included herself among their number. Scraping his gears rather badly, Rule said, “I try to call her Quarta. Somebody has to. I can’t stand sheep.”

Feeling she might as well be hung for a sheep as a chatterer, Sylvia said, “You do have rather unusual names in your family, don’t you?”

He turned towards her so that one of the wind-blown side-locks almost touched her cheek.

“I don’t think so at all. Names ought to be distinctive. My grandfather and great-grandfather were both called ‘Pelham.’ My mother’s name’s Portia—a very fine name and it suits her. Quarta in itself’s a good enough name if everyone wouldn’t call her Quashy. And what’s wrong with Rule?”

Sylvia said hastily, “Nothing, nothing. It’s a saint, isn’t it?”

“There was a saint.”

“Don’t you find that rather a responsibility?”

But he was offended at that—or thought it not worth noticing; for some distance he drove in silence and with a wild sort of badness—cutting corners, crashing his gears, ill-using his brakes. He said suddenly, “Shall you like being secretary to my mother?”

“That’s rather a difficult question.”

“Oh, speak up. I can’t stand politeness.”

Obviously. “Well—I don’t know. I admire her work tremendously.”

“What? The Concord Crusade?”

“Yes. That and all her peace work.”

“Then you’ve got some sense.” He took one hand off the wheel and the car swerved frightfully. “She’s right of course; that’s one thing I do agree with her about. We must, must, must stop all this militarism and war. I don’t care what sacrifice I make—” He went off at score, mounted evidently on a favourite steed; nothing new or original, but all said with tremendous force and conviction. “I don’t see how any person calling himself a Christian . . .” “I don’t see how anyone with the faintest claims to civilised morality . . .” Sylvia stopped him at last.

“Do you mean to say you wouldn’t fight?”

“Me? Fight?” The car almost took the hedge. “I’m just telling you—”

“Not if you had to?”

“I couldn’t have to. You couldn’t make me. Nothing could.”

“Not if the country was in danger? Not if people were coming to kill your mother and your sister and all your friends?”

“Not in any circumstances whatsoever. You’ve been listening to the usual drivel I can see. Now if you’ll just listen to me for five minutes—”

“I don’t want to listen to you if that’s how you feel.”

“But you’ve just said you wanted Peace.”

“Yes, but not your way.”

“Oh, all right.”

He drove in sulky silence for the best part of a mile; in a bend of the road he nearly ran down an ice-cream tricycle, propelled by a very tired and hot-looking boy. The sight seemed to cheer him.

“I had one of those things last year.”

“What? An ice-cream?”

“No, of course not; one of those barrows. I did a thousand and sixty-two miles on the thing. All over South England. I—-I wrote a book about it.”

“Did you?” This was more interesting. “Who published it?”

“Well, it isn’t published yet. But I’ve got it typed out. I might let you see it some time. But I doubt if you’d care for it. You see, I really roughed it, I was really among the down-and-outs. It’s a stark book, that. Life in the nude. But probably the nude offends you.”

Sylvia thought, that depends; but for the meantime it obviously mustn’t; you’re not going to triumph over me with your starkery. She said, “Oh, no, it doesn’t. I know about these things. My father”—she bit hard on the word—“was an artist. And in Germany—”

The word “Germany”, it seemed, touched off a fuse; Rule approved of Germany. “Now there’s a country . . . ideals . . . on the up-grade . . . their Hitlerjugend . . . fit . . . gloriously fit . . . I can’t stand degenerates.” But just as the word “Germany” had touched off Rule, so the word “fit” touched off Sylvia; back in a blinding assault of tears, back came Basil; Basil talking about fitness; Basil at Bridstead, worshipping his physical god of muscle and guts and games. . . “I do love talking to you, Sylvie; you always understand me so.” And I loved hearing—oh, I did!

In the middle of the Hitlerjugend, Rule realised suddenly that he was passing a gate; with a spirited racing turn he just made it. A house which could only be Hambling Hall appeared on the starboard bow; Sylvia pulled herself together. We haven’t got on very well, I’m afraid; there’s an antagonism; we haven’t hit it off. But after all, he’s the least important member of the family; perhaps the others . . .

But—oh, Basil! . . .

*  *  *

Mrs. Portia Tweed, already seen once and now in her best mood of welcome, presented no element of surprise. She was a big woman; she might—and would—have been called “magnificent” in the days when that word was no insult. In quality she was curiously metallic; apart from giving the impression that she was made of shining blue steel, she wore gun-metal colours, her abundant hair had been deliberately bleached to a battleship grey and she was harnessed with a collection of small metal ornaments said to be Mexican silver but looking like pewter. The larger of these clashed, the smaller tinkled. Neither stout nor slim, she was regally erect—like a drawn sword or a pylon or a railway signal, like anything in fact that was made of iron rather than of flesh and blood.

“Come away, Sylvia! I shall call you Sylvia, shan’t I?”

Sylvia was in due course to recognise in Portia’s statements of this order a sort of formula in which the qualifying question was meant to be ignored; only the assertion counted. Meantime, she said only, “Oh, please!”

“I am so glad you were able to come down early. We shall be alone at lunch except, of course, for Mr. Haase.” (Why ‘of course’? thought Sylvia; for from his name, Mr. Haase could hardly be a relative.) “After lunch I can take you through some of my current work. I am afraid Miss MacMurray”—Miss MacMurray was the super-American whose undefined sex had worried Rule—“has left it all in rather a mess. But we shall soon get it straight, shan’t we?”

Sylvia said she hoped so, and was shown to her room. The room was large and comfortable but mercilessly well-lit with large bare windows which looked out over an ill-kept paddock to a worse-kept hedge of yews. A single melancholy sheep grazed placidly on the unkempt grass and at the stable end of the hedge there was something that looked suspiciously like a dump of broken-up packing-cases. There was no sign of a gardener—or indeed of a garden to require his labours. Searching presently for a place of necessity whose whereabouts Portia had not revealed, Sylvia observed that Hambling Hall was much less grand than she had expected; it had the air of a house in the hands of people who couldn’t really keep it up; much of it was unfurnished and empty. Nor was there any sign of an adequate domestic staff; a palpable daily, with “village” written all over her, was doing out a room, but there seemed to be no housemaids. Half way along the landing, however, Sylvia encountered the manservant in black trousers and white steward’s jacket who had carried up her suit-cases. Mysteriously divining her need, he said, “It’s on the left; down two steps.”

Sylvia, thanking him, studied him with some intentness. He didn’t look like a servant; he didn’t speak like a servant; he addressed her as might a fellow-guest appreciating her difficulty. Slight; neat; a smooth un-English lightly-tanned face; crisp black hair; a smile. He said, in that “gentleman’s” voice, “If you want anything, ring. But don’t ring unless you want it pretty badly. I’ve a good deal to do.”

Sylvia said, a little doubtfully, “I suppose you’re Mrs. Tweed’s butler.”

He replied disconcertingly, “I’m Pringle. I’m the butler and the footman and the gardener and both housemaids and the stillroom maid. And the cook. Except for chars and dailies there hasn’t been another servant in this house for over six months. Now you’ll understand why I don’t encourage ringing for hot water at all hours.”

Impudent? Yet he wasn’t impudent; he had a way with him—you couldn’t but accept him. Sylvia said, smiling, “I won’t bother you more than I can help.”

“Then we’ll get on . . . On the left; down two steps.” He terminated the conversation with aplomb.

Sylvia thought, with keen interest, “This is a queer household.” And lunch was queer too. It was served by Pringle—who had presumably also cooked it—and it was quite unexpectedly excellent. Baked fillets of sole, rolled up with parsley and lemon and capers and a something unknown that was unmistakably good; to follow, a sort of charlotte russe that melted on the tongue. They drank Evian—which must have been procured, thought Sylvia, with some difficulty, and was no great improvement on the local water. Unless, of course, they couldn’t trust their drains. The table was decorated with flowers and the condition of the silver was remarkable; Pringle, thought Sylvia, must be a magician.

The company consisted of Sylvia, Portia, Mr. Haase and Rule; but the conversation was practically monopolised by Portia who passed tirelessly from Women’s Rural Institutes, through Air Raid Precautions to the political tensions of Central Europe. Sylvia said very little, Rule nothing at all except “Pass the salt” (nobody passed it), and Mr. Haase conversed mainly by courteous inclinations of the head and by appreciative “Ah”s and “So-o”s. Interested as she was, Sylvia—on these limited data—could make very little of him beyond the fact that he was a middle-elderly and exceedingly handsome Jew whose hair had apparently gone grey very early and who spoke with a noticeable German accent. He was also—Portia’s introduction—“Our neighbour.” His premature greyness and his accent were easily explained; for it appeared that he had been in Germany—or Austria?—in some capacity vaguely connected with the chemical industry, had been thrown out of it in 1936 and was now that tragic spectacle—a man of ability and intelligence at a completely loose end. Clearly also he was Portia’s devoted admirer—a fact that annoyed Sylvia. Quite conceivably he had the better general brain and he must almost certainly know far more about the politics of Central Europe; yet there he sat, lapping it all up. “Ah!” and “So-o!” and once or twice, “Dear lady!” . . . The only salient points about Rule were that while he had put on a tie he had still failed to brush his hair and that he was apparently wrestling with some inner mental discomfort he was unable to express.

Eating her fish and her charlotte russe (and thanking God for Pringle) Sylvia thought first that Mr. Haase was charming; then somehow that he wasn’t; finally that he was nondescript. She became increasingly cross with Portia whose voice—cultivated on a hundred lecture platforms—was as metallic as the rest of her. On the whole, Rule came out of any comparisons not so badly.

The incredible Pringle produced some excellent coffee; Mr. Haase drank it and took his departure. He bent low over Portia’s hand (“Dear lady!”); said to Sylvia—and very kindly, as if he meant it—“I am so-o glad you have come to Hambling”; bowed courteously to Rule (one guessed he had given up Rule). He went away in a large Daimler driven by a stone-faced chauffeur; quite evidently he had saved from the German—or Austrian?—debacle something more than a pittance. Sylvia’s speculations were, however, curtailed by Portia who rose with a clash of Mexican silver and said brightly, “And now to work. We shan’t waste time, shall we?”

Work it was for a solid two and a half hours, and the amount of time wasted was negligible. But to her infinite satisfaction, Sylvia found that she could do it. In fact, if you stripped it of Portia’s mumbo-jumbo, rent from it the veil of witch-doctoring and mystery she cast around it, there wasn’t so much to it after all. It was just notes and lectures and statistics and books of reference and Central European names. The Concord Crusade, Portia called it; there was a central organisation—Portia?—with correspondents here and there throughout Europe; they wrote each other long letters, apparently, and exchanged reports. It was supposed to be a women’s Crusade but most of the correspondents seemed to be men; too many of them seemed to be Americans. And they had all, thought Sylvia, too much leisure.

On the right lines, no doubt. Harmless. But was it doing anything? Frankly, on a first impression, no.

*  *  *

Quashy made her entrance at tea-time or rather in the middle of tea. She burst in explosively, said with great intenseness, “Oh—darlings—how-are-you-all? My-God-I-must-telephone,” dropped her handbag, knocked over a photograph frame and careered onwards and through. As neither Rule nor Portia made any comment, this was presumably an accustomed Quashy gambit.

She came back presently and flung herself into a chair in such a way that almost the whole of one leg was exposed. Modish tan stockings, Sylvia noted, and something rather pretentious in embroidered lemon silk. Quashy said, with a presumption of interest nobody had shown, “I just had to telephone . . . Oh, tea. . . . Darling, I had cocktails at Livia’s . . .”

Portia stemmed the flood, slaughtering this wood-wind gabble with her own sounding brass.

“This is Sylvia Savage, dear. My new Secretary.”

Quashy, staring, said something like “Hye-daw!” and proceeded with her interrupted discourse. “Sweetest, sweetest Mumsie, why do you always get these dreadful cakes? I could have brought—”

Rule said, unexpectedly, “But you didn’t.”

“Dar-ling! . . . I do think they have such lovely teas at that place Livia goes to. I do think—”

Sylvia, completely ignored except for that “Hye-daw,” thought bitterly, Do you? Not often . . . Well, anyway, you present no problem; you’re straightforward—and intolerable. I know you; London’s full of you—from Shepherd’s Market to Shepherd’s Hill and back to Shepherd’s Bush. Yap-yap! “Darling, darling Oh-my-God-I-must-telephone.” That’s you all right. Cocktails and no eyebrows, never eat a decent meal and say “bloody” as often as you can. That’s you . . . She helped herself to one of the despised cakes—and found it really rather disagreeable.

Rule had been glowering at his sister for some time; he said now, sniffing ostentatiously, “You’ve been to the hairdresser’s again.” Quashy, returning his stare, riposted promptly, “Yes, beautiful; have you?” Not bad, thought Sylvia, especially the “beautiful”; but Rule should be supported. Intervening, she said, in a voice of exaggerated calm, “Where do you go for your hair, Miss Tweed?”

Quashy was volubly informative. As Sylvia had expected, it was of course “some girl” whom “somebody” had set up, who had “learned somewhere”; that the girl was “marvellous” went without saying, but Quashy said it several times. Sylvia said, “I think one ought to be very careful nowadays with these places. I know a girl who had her hair absolutely destroyed.”

“But this isn’t a cheap place.”

“Neither was the other. I do think one ought to go to someone first-class.”

“Well, where do you go?” said Quashy as if the answer must be “Woolworths.”

Sylvia played her ace. “Well, usually André Marque’s. Of course he’s always frightfully busy. But I could give you a line to him any time.”

“My dear That would be just sweet of you!” But quite suddenly Quashy pulled down her neglected skirt and sat up in her chair. “Touchée” thought Sylvia with malice.

After tea, Sylvia escaped for a stroll in what passed for the garden—which she indeed found neglected to an extraordinary degree. Pringle, apparently, had his limits. There, somewhat to her dismay, she was joined by Rule who promptly proceeded to disburden himself of the trouble that had been obsessing him all day.

“I say! I say, Miss—Miss Savage—”

“Try ‘Sylvia.’ If you like.”

“Well, Sylvia, then . . . I’m afraid I wasn’t frightfully polite on the way down this morning. But the fact is well, I don’t see much good in politeness. You see, I have my own views about things—very pronounced views—and I just must say what I think. I can’t stand hypocrites.”

“Nor I,” thought Sylvia, “prigs.” Aloud she said, “Yes, I know. But do you think one can always manage the plain unvarnished truth? I mean—”

Rule swelled visibly. “Yes, you jolly well can if you’re a Christian. And you must excuse me asking you—it’s a thing I ask everybody, I have to ask everybody are you a Christian?”

Sylvia parried. “Isn’t that rather a difficult one to answer?”

“Not in the least.”

“But—what is a Christian? I mean, there are so many different ways—”

“Nothing of the kind. There’s only one way. I’ve got it absolutely clear. A Christian—”

He filled his fine chest and began to tell her at great length just what a Christian was. As she had expected, it was a person bearing a great many resemblances to Rule.

“Then you’re a Christian, Rule?”

“I am indeed.”

“And that’s the only kind there is?”

“Certainly.”

“Then I suppose you’ll go into the Church?”

“We-ell. I might and I mightn’t. I don’t know that the Church--; One day, perhaps.”

Sylvia thought, I dislike him; it’s his hair and his teeth and himself in general; I’ll let him have one.

“And—just meantime—what are you doing?”

It went home; he answered shamefacedly that he was doing nothing. “But what else can I do? If I’ve a vocation? You wouldn’t have me betray it?”

Sylvia thought, I mustn’t be a cad. I mustn’t make fun of this. This is Faith—the one thing needful, the thing we all want so terribly. I mustn’t do anything in the wide world to hurt it. She said, more gently, “Tell me about the vocation.”

He told her—delightedly. And as she walked up and down, up and down the weed-encumbered path—twenty-five paces, right about turn; twenty-five paces, right about turn—listening to the age-old fervence of the Evangel-out-of-place, Sylvia thought, First evening at Hambling. Oh, dear! Oh, dear!

*  *  *

Late but soothingly came Pelham Tweed, driving himself home from his Ministry in his component of the fleet—which turned out to be a rather expensive semi-sports model. (They do do themselves well!) Sylvia had been expecting a figure of tragedy—something gaunt and shattered with eyes that looked distantly into the irrevocable past; instead, there came to meet her a beautiful little faun in the clothes of a perfect gentleman. Not so little, either; he must have been five foot eight or nine; but he was so delicately made, so perfectly finished, so complete yet so fragile, that he seemed like something you could pick up and arrange artistically on the mantelpiece. His tragedies had not aged him, for his hair and his pointed beard were a rich russet, his face unlined, his eyes confidently bright. One is always reading, thought Sylvia, about “silky” beards; now I have actually seen one.

It was understood that normally Sylvia would have an evening tray in her room; but to-night she was to be admitted to the privilege of the family dinner. Pelham further admitted her to the privilege of the family sherry—which, like all the creature comforts of Hambling Hall, was of the highest order.

“I hope you will be very happy here, Sylvia.”

(“Sylvia”—right away, without waiting to be asked, and not so very paternally either.)

“Oh, I’m sure I shall.” (Almost too effusively?)

He eyed her through his sherry-glass, which toned beautifully with his beard. Sylvia thought, Brown’s my colour too. But his suit—an exquisite suit; Savile Row at the very least—was a delicate pearl grey; with it he wore a white shirt with a faint red stripe and a tie of darkish red with white circles. He showed much cuff—extraordinarily impeccable after a day in town.

“I know, of course, my dear, that you’ve had a—tragedy.”

Sylvia felt vexed, then relieved. The attitude of Hambling Hall so far had been a complete ignoring of the past; satisfactory, of course, yet it was as well that someone should admit the existence of the shadow. She looked away, however, from the impeccable faun, finding no very easy answer. But apparently he didn’t want one.

“I too have had tragedy in my fife.” And instantly came the thought, the unkind uncharitable thought—“Was that why you spoke of mine? Because you wanted to talk about yours?”

“I—I’m sorry.” (Idiotically—but what else could one say?)

“It’s of no consequence—except in so far as it helps me to understand the pain of others. Pathemata mathemata. To suffer is to learn. As usual the old Greek was in the right of it.”

Sylvia made some accommodating noise; the faun’s eyes—startled, startling—traversed her body.

“Tragedy! It’s a kind of anaesthetic. But sometimes it’s lethal. Of myself”—he drained his sherry—“I can only say, ‘This man was.’”

“Oh, surely you mustn’t say that!” Imbecile, imbecile; but he makes it impossible, standing there and drinking sherry and saying things like that when I’ve only known him five minutes. Yet, impelled by a demon, she went babbling on. “Of course I know things are never quite the same again——”

He said, with the deepest significance and yet with the most insulting patronage, “A-ah!” And suddenly Sylvia, forgetting altogether how nice he had seemed at first, was seized with an acute desire to strike him.

*  *  *

But the last word was with Pringle. On her way to an early bed with a copy of Peace With These Dictators? under her arm, Sylvia met him in the passage. He was as alert as ever, smiling as cockily; in his white coat he was like a—like a—I’ve got it—like a Purser. That’s what he’s like—a Purser: one of those Passenger-Line Mediterranean-cruise Pursers who spend all their time in spotless suits playing bull-board with the likeliest-looking girls.

“Well, welcome to Humbug Hall.”

“Is that what you call it?”

“It’s what you’ll call it too—when you’ve been here a while. It’s a funny house, this.”

Sylvia considered him. His assumption of equality had already ceased to worry her—partly because she saw he extended it to her employers also and partly because it was well-founded. My equal? He’s my superior. Could I have done a day’s work such as this man must have done and still smile at the end of it? I could not.

“I don’t see anything particularly funny about it.”

“You will. It’s queer.”

“How—queer? Haunted?”

“Oh, haunted nothing! I don’t believe in ghosts and neither would you if you’d seen as many stiffs as I have. They’re only too glad to get away. No, if you hear anything jumping about in the night, it’s mice. Mice I’ll grant you—hundreds of them, but we can’t do anything about it because cats give Mr. Tweed the creeps and she hates dogs, so there you are.”

Sylvia thought again. So Portia “hated dogs”; not a good sign.

“Well, Pringle . . . Is Pringle your name?”

“No. Just a label.”

“Oh! . . . Well, Pringle, it’s an old house with mice; our employers are an—unusual family. There’s nothing very remarkable about that.”

“There’s more than that. It’s a rum house this. Rum. If you’re the right sort—you look the right sort—you’ll get a lot of fun out of Humbug Hall before you’ve finished . . . Good-night.”

Away he went—with the last word again. And Sylvia, undressing the shape like wine (for once without arousing any memories), decided that Humbug Hall—that name had come to stay—was indeed rum. She had a curious feeling that, like the mansion itself, its inhabitants were none of them quite what they seemed.

IV

But in the night one woke. A shot—that was a shot; quick! that room across the landing. . .

No, no, you silly; you’re in Humbug Hall and everything is dead still. Dead still, that’s the word. I am dead; everything’s over. Yet I am only twenty-five; I suppose my employers are in the early forties; we could still be going on like this thirty years hence—twenty-five anyway. Twenty-five years; as long again as I’ve lived already. Twenty-five years; and nothing in any of them. How can I face it?

“Sylvie, I do really and truly love you. I think you are the most beautiful splendid creature, I do really. There isn’t anybody in the world at all like you . . .” Oh, what silliness, what idiocy; and yet how sweet to have someone in the world who thought and said these things; how it supported, buttressed, carried you along! . . . There is still that someone in the world; you have only to send a telegram, a letter, a penny postcard . . . Oh, physically, yes; somewhere Basil is still going on—unless he’s fallen down a mountain in the Black Forest, which is not very easy to do; but Basil-and-Sylvia are gone. “You see, Sylvie, when we’re married I’ll have a much better chance of getting a House even though I am only Games Master just now—” My poor silly darling, if you married me now, what chance would you have of even remaining a Games Master? Mixed up with the daughter of a man who shot himself because he was found out in--; no, I won’t say the word; too horrible. (And even yet I don’t believe it was true—but what’s the good of that when everybody else does?) No, Basil, no; it would be . “My dear Caldecott, I’m awfully sorry, but I’m afraid you’ll have to be looking out for another post. Yes, yes dear fellow—I know and you know; but then the parents—the Board—the Governors.” And the Agencies; “Of course we’ll put your name down, Mr. Caldecott, but—” No, Basil, no; I should ruin you.

So I won’t send any telegram or any penny postcard and if you look for me, Basil—and I know you’ll look for me, you poor faithful silly sweet—you won’t find me. They that seek me early shan’t find me; or late either.

That queer creature Pringle said, “You’ll get a lot of fun out of Humbug Hall.” I doubt it. I used to live with Cesar Savage, a man whose conversation was celebrated in three continents, a man who kept the Sixty Club in New York sitting up all night—-just listening to him. I was Cesar Savage’s friend; and that was like sitting at an exquisite banquet that was always still more exquisitely renewed. I thought it would never end. But it has ended—and what have I in its place? Humbug Hall. Portia saying we must stop war; “we must unite the women of the world in a crusade to put an end to this nonsense for ever.” Sez you! Pelham knowing he is the only person on earth who has really suffered. Rule being stark with his ice-cream tricycle and shouting me down about Christ. Quashy being Quashy. I ask you! . . .

She leant over and switched on her bedside light; trust Humbug Hall for tout confort moderne. Three akk emma; bitter melancholy hour, hour of demons and vampires, when Hope has fled to the skies and Fear sits playing his nasty coronachs outside the window . . . Well, it comes to this—that I shall have to take some more of that sleeping-stuff. I said, “No more drugs after you leave London”; but—just this once. Crunch! crunch! and the familiar metallic taste; and now, off light and relax—relax relax—relax—

Pringle said “mice.” I suppose that’s mice I hear. Or the hot-water pipes. You could hardly expect the hot-water pipes in a house like this not to make a noise. But if you were to ask me, I should say it was somebody moving about. You’re very stealthy and quiet, aren’t you, my dear? but I hear you. Well, people do move about in the night, don’t they; they go to the bathroom and so on. If it was the bathroom, I should hear the water presently . . . I don’t hear any water . . . I don’t hear anything . . . Thank God, I’m asleep . . .

*  *  *

Before she got up in the morning, Sylvia wrote to Cousin Lettuce. There was a huge writing-table in her bedroom, fitted with a supply of rich hand-made notepaper. “Hambling Hall, Herts,” and the telephone number. Imitation quill pens; a fountain pen; a gold-mounted pencil. Oh, lavish again!

. . . “Well, Lettuce, I have settled here and I’m trying to be grateful and I am grateful to you, darling, because you’ve done just everything. (And you won’t forget your promise, will you? Tell Nobody. I know you won’t.) I can’t say I think I’ll ever like anybody here; on the other hand I don’t actively dislike any of them except Quashy who is all the Quashies that ever had a cocktail too many in Jermyn Street. She doesn’t matter except that I’d based some hopes on her. They seem only to live in a part of the house, which is just as well as they’ve no servants except an extraordinary man who calls himself Pringle and who is more somehow than meets the eye.

“Can you throw any light on a gentleman called Haase? Known to everybody here as ‘Axey’ (contraction of ‘Axel,’ I presume) and he is very very very friendly. I would put him down as a tame cat of Portia’s if I didn’t feel that P. is not quite the sort for tame cats. He certainly admires and I should think the Man Who Was (I mean Mr. Tweed—you must have heard him sometime) got a bit boring at times. I can’t remember who you said he went to France with but it doesn’t matter for I’m sure he’ll tell me all about it himself very soon. We are good at telling people about things here; Portia, How to stop War; Rule, How to Find Salvation; Quashy, How to suck eggs. No, I take that bit back about Rule—I mustn’t make fun of that. But the others I think are fair game. I know I’m not hurting your feelings, dearest, because you don’t really like the Maison Tweed any more than I do—so far.

“Don’t forget your promise. Oh, and I enclose a ten bob note. Be an angel and take some grapes and some Crime Club Sixpennies to poor old Gribbie at the St. Pancras. He dotes on Anthony Berkeley. From you, remember, not from me.

“Ever, darling, Sylvia.”

V

Had Sylvia been asked, at the end of her first forty-eight hours in Humbug Hall, “With which member of the family will you quarrel first?” she would have unhesitatingly replied, “Quashy.” But at the end of her first fortnight, this order of precedence would have been modified. It was becoming increasingly obvious that there would have to be some sort of a show-down with Rule; and further, the task of eternally sympathising with the Man Who Was was becoming so onerous that a sudden outburst of brusquerie, a flash of temper, some sort of cold douche, seemed shortly inevitable. It was really a question of which would come to a head first.

Not that Quashy had been any less rude or tiresome; she was these things ex hypothesi and by nature. But it appeared that she could be other things as well. It was Sylvia’s misfortune to suffer periodically from stultifying headaches; one day she was discovered by Quashy prostrated by an attack of unusual violence, aggravated no doubt by protracted worry and by another white night of memories. Quashy said brassily, “You look a bit old-fashioned, don’t you?”

Sylvia said, through set teeth, “Headache.” Instantly Quashy’s whole manner changed.

“But—darling, darling! Let me get you something.”

“I’ve taken aspirin, thank you.”

“Oh, aspirin! You might as well eat sawdust. But just wait a jiff. I’ll fix you.”

She rushed frantically from the room as if leading a last hope into the burning building; just when Sylvia was beginning to hope that she had forgotten all about it, she reappeared, proffering a curious-looking sweet.

“So sorry, darling; I couldn’t find the damned things. Now just you try this.”

Sylvia begged to be excused.

“Oh, but you must, you really must. Darling! Please! Just to please me. It’s a Cachet Printemps. You can only get them in Paris really but I know a girl who brought some over from the Channel Islands. She had to put them into her knickers coming through the Customs because you’re not supposed . . . Come on, now, down with it like a little lamb. One, two! . . . Oh, darling, you’re not going to disappoint me?”

Realising that she couldn’t, Sylvia bit and swallowed the thing. It imparted in passing a brief burning sensation to the back of her throat, but had—as anticipated—no other effect whatsoever. Sylvia, however, had not the heart to tell Quashy so; she thanked her and said she felt better. After all, it was Quashy’s treasure, brought from the Channel Islands in the knickers of some intrepid smuggleress. . . . It was kind of Quashy; yet at tea-time that very afternoon she was more Jermyn-Street than ever.

Pelham Tweed himself was a still more difficult problem because here Sylvia was a house divided against herself. Here is a man who has known great happiness and lost it; as you have. Here is a man who has ascended heights and fallen; as you yourself. Here sentiment called to sentiment; the wail of a million crooners who had Lost their Loves, who had Parted, who had Said Good-bye involved Pelham and Sylvia in a Technicolor fog from which the faces of all the Unhappy Lovers of history peered sadly forth. A good sharp breeze, a whiff of the salty east, would blow that fog away; but—oh, I cannot supply it; I am the last person who can supply it.

Sylvia’s prophecy to Lettuce that Pelham would very soon tell her all about it was promptly realised. He achieved this on her second Sunday in the course of an evening walk suggested by himself, and despite Sylvia’s mental resolve that he shouldn’t. He got in on the strength of her chance remark that a row of elm trees in the evening light was very beautiful.

“Half beautiful.”

“Oh, no. I think very.”

“I am glad to hear you say that, Sylvia. It means that you have escaped the fatal thing, the one disaster.”

“I’m afraid I don’t quite—”

“It means you have never known Perfection. Now, I have known it—only for a brief moment; it can be only for a brief moment—and ever since I have been wondering whether to thank God for that or curse Him.”

“I should have thought, thank.”

“Wait. Wait till you have known it yourself. So that everything else, everything lesser, becomes drab and meaningless and stupid and opaque. ‘For he on honey dew hath fed And drunk the milk of Paradise.’ Ah, Coleridge must have known!”

Sylvia saw she was in for it; she grasped at Coleridge.

“I thought that was opium.”

“There are opiates and opiates. The drunkard has his dreams, and the opium-eater. But there is only one Perfection and that comes when love—real passionate love—is given his way.”

Sylvia thought miserably, “It’s true; Basil . . . She said timidly, “It—it was like that with you?”

“It was like that with me. A long time ago; yesterday The Perfection is beyond time . . . Sit down.”

There was no option; on a convenient log they sat.

“I don’t know why I am telling you this.” (“But I do,” thought Sylvia crossly, suddenly recovering the East-wind attitude, “and I’ll bet that’s how you always begin.”) “Once, long years ago, I met a woman.”

“What was she like? Dark? Fair?” (Briskly asked; but the Technicolor fog was closing round; “Goodbye,” “Goodbye.” “Parted,” “Parted.” “Of all sad words—”)

“How can I tell you? I only know what she was like to me. Perhaps I never saw her at all. I saw a mermaid, an elfchen, a dream. It was like a flash of lightning or a blow from a pole-axe; pray God, my child, you never see such lightning or feel such a blow. We met . . .” Stroking the silky beard, gazing into fairy distances with the clear brown eyes, he went on and on; and despite herself, Sylvia yearned towards his miseries. Sad broken loves; whose dirge is whispered by the warbling lute; alas, alas! And yet—oh, bother him!

“Perhaps you do not know the island of Port Cros. Perhaps there is no such place; perhaps if I went there now I should find it gone, a hole in the sea . . .” On and on and on. Sylvia thought, most uncomfortably, I am Portia’s secretary; should I be hearing all this? Has she heard it? Probably—and with variations . . . Her discomfort turned to distaste; after all, it seemed to be just a pretty ordinary tale of common adultery; if you took an elfchen to the island of Port Cros, was that after all so very different from taking a tartchen to the island of Man? And in any case, why talk about it? But there was nothing to do but listen.

“. . . And so I had my moment of perfection. A fortnight, ten days; a thousand years, a second? How can one tell . . . But, of course, it killed me. At the end of it I died.”

Sylvia began, “Oh, I shouldn’t look—” But he took her hand; she couldn’t refuse it, even though his own was soft, soft like a baby’s. Or a toadstool.

“Ah, no! Ah, no! Wait till your own time comes.” He released her hand with a heroic reassumption of the status quo. “And now tell me how you like your work. . . .”

He is soft and silky, thought Sylvia, and I don’t like him. And he won’t catch me again. But he did catch her again, the very next evening, in the garden this time; and in a bad moment when she was thinking back to Basil. He crept upon her unawares and she said, startled:

“Oh, I thought you’d gone with the others.”

He shook his beautiful little head. “There was tennis.”

“Don’t you play tennis?”

“Oh, yes, I play. I play at tennis as I play at so many other things. But sometimes I feel—well, I just can’t.”

Sylvia began to say that a game of tennis would do him good: the faun’s smile played over her body again—up and down, up and down, like a spray of syrup.

“You mustn’t expect too much of the Dead, Sylvia. For he on honey—”

Sylvia, excusing herself hastily, made a bolt for it.

*  *  *

And it was so bolting for it that she ran into Pringle who was polishing silver at the hall table. She didn’t want to talk to Pringle; but if I’m talking to Pringle I can’t be talking to—him. She said ingratiatingly, “Hullo!”

“Hullo, Sylvia.” (He had called her “Sylvia” from the very first day with perfect naturalness; he called Rule “Rule” and Quashy “Quashy”; he didn’t go quite so far as “Pelham” or “Portia,” but he avoided “Sirs” and “Madams” with dexterity.) “Hullo, Sylvia Getting away from the Bearded Lady?”

“The—? Oh! . . . Pringle, I don’t think you should——”

“I saw him chasing you into the garden. Telling you all his troubles?”

“Of course not!” She picked up a chamois leather “I might help you with some of that silver. I like doing silver. And you seem to have about enough to do. How on earth do you get through it all?”

“Ever tried running a hotel? It’s easy after that.”

“Did you run a hotel?”

“Yes. My own.”

“Was that before or after you were a purser?”

“Who said I was a purser?”

“Nobody. But you were one, weren’t you?”

“Yes. Oh, yes. Several voyages. All over the east.” He picked up a tea-pot. “If you want to know what women’ll sink to, sign on as Purser in an east-going liner. They reckon you’re carried as a sort of ship’s stallion. Believe me or not, Sylvia, I’ve had to bolt my cabin door. And in the Red Sea, too.”

“They must have found you very attractive.”

“Oh, no. They just think that’s what God made Pursers for. And there’s a kind of woman—the sea affects them with a sort of exhibitionism. You see it on beaches.”

Sylvia cocked an eye at him; “exhibitionism”? An odd word to come from a house-man. But then he wasn’t a house-man; being Humbug Hall’s house-man, he wouldn’t be. She said, “You’re not married, Pringle?”

“Not since the Rangoon days. I was in the teak business then . . . They’re nice girls, the Burmese . . . But she tried to strangle me one night because I went home with one of the Bandman Follies. So I reckon that marriage is annulled.”

“Um? . . . Tell me about the hotel.”

“Oh, the hotel. Well, I came into a little money, you see, and as the English tourists were always grousing about their hotels, I thought I’d see if I could give them a better one. Misguidedly, I bought one of Ye Old-e Old-e’s—The Standing Dragon, it’s called; it’s on the Holyhead Road—”

“I’ve had tea there.”

“Not in my time . . . Well, Sylvia, never buy a sort of half-way house on a main road. You’re only buying a public convenience.”

Sylvia laughed despite herself. “It can’t always be that.”

“Pretty nearly. And your staff are always going off to ye old-e dance in ye old-e village hall. That’s what burst me up. I let my staff go to a dance one night and they came back at three in the morning pretty noisy. I’d one housemaid, Mabel was her name; she suffered from hysteria sexualis—it’s wonderful what a lot of Mabels do. She was screeching like a Harlem negress. Naturally the guests kicked up a dust. Next week there was another dance; I said, ‘No, you don’t.’ Well, the whole lot walked out on me. I ran that hotel single-handed with the help of the village idiot for eleven days; then I conked out. Even then I might have got away with it if the village idiot hadn’t put all the guests’ shoes in the bath and turned on the hot.”

He picked up another tea-pot; there seemed to be dozens of them.

“But you see, Sylvia, after that, Humbug Hall’s nothing.”

Sylvia set down her finished salver.

“No, I suppose not. . . One more question, Pringle.”

“Inquisitive!”

“Do you always tell the truth?”

He met her gaze unflinchingly. “There’s a good old saying, Sylvia. Ask no questions and you’ll hear no lies.”

*  *  *

Events—real outside-world events—were rare at Humbug Hall, but at the beginning of Sylvia’s third week one happened. A long blue envelope came for her at breakfast—forwarded from her Bank. It seemed that a City of Swansea Bond for four hundred pounds, which belonged to her, had fallen due and the City of Swansea, rising nobly to its obligations, had paid. Sylvia took the stamped slip of paper to Portia.

“I suppose this’ll have to be re-invested. I wonder if you could advise me—”

Portia was in a snappy mood that morning. She said that she never undertook responsibilities of that kind.

“Surely, Sylvia, your banker—”

“Yes, I know. And I know what he’d say. War Loan. But I thought—I thought I might have a little flutter with it. I mean—well, you know, capital appreciation. Isn’t that what they call it?”

Portia fidgeted in the manner of one disturbed by some buzzing insect.

“I don’t really know anything about these things. My husband manages all our investments. You could consult him.”

I could, thought Sylvia—and be told about Perfection and not to ask too much of the Dead. She pondered for an instant.

“Would you mind—would you mind if I consulted Mr. Haase?”

“Axey? Why should I mind? Of course he’s a very busy man.” (Is he? It’s the first I’ve heard of it.) “But I daresay he’d do it for you. He’ll be coming to lunch.” (Never too busy for that.)

“Then I think I will.”

“My dear, you must do just as you think best.”

And not worry me any more. Quite so. But I will ask Axey for Axey won’t take it like that. In odd hours and half-hours of talk with Axey three things had become manifest about him—he was (a) knowledgeable, (b) kind, (c) worried. And the greatest of these was charity.

Axey plainly liked Sylvia—not after the manner of Pelham but rather in the frank and open style of Pringle. In his marked German accent—so like Conrad Veidt on the films—he talked to her about Austria.

“You see, I was in business there. In the chemical industry. But then I am a Jew. The Germans do not want Jews, they do not want our brains. They will be very sorry for it some day for they cannot get along—without the brains of the Jews. I do not like to boast—I leave that to Hitler and Goering and Goebbels—but the brains of the Jews will still be running the world when the Third Reich is collapsed.”

Sylvia said, “I don’t understand why people dislike the Jews. My father”—she caught her breath—“my father knew many Jews. They were charming.”

Axey said, sighing, “Your father was not a German. The German mind is not a mind now, it is a nerve—a raw nerve. Like a nerve it has only one purpose—to convey action. Like a nerve it leaps under stimulus. The idea of the Jew is made to stimulate the German mind-nerve and it leaps to action. If it is stupid action, how can you blame it? It is only a nerve, not a mind. Emotion, not reason.”

“Is it as bad there as—one hears?”

Axey’s face tightened suddenly. “It is worse; it is worse.” Sylvia said lightly that he must be glad to be out of it.

“I am out of it—yes. But my son is there still. My son Conrad.” He spoke the three words as one, pronouncing the name in the German fashion. “Cone-rat”; “my-son-Conerat.” And behind his dark steadfast face, under his smooth grey cap of hair, you saw fear—real dreadful fear.

“In Vienna?”

“That, thank God, no. He is in Rome.”

“But Rome’s all right, isn’t it? I mean, Mussolini——”

“Who shall say what is all right for my people nowadays—or for how long? Meantime he is well, he has work that he likes—”

“What’s he doing?”

“He is a lecturer in the University. On tropical medicine. Oh, yes—so far, so good. But——”

“How old is he?”

“He will be twenty-eight next month.”

Sylvia touched his arm. “I’m so sorry. You must be dreadfully worried.”

“I am worse than worried. I am afraid. It is horrible to be afraid and helpless . . . There is such violence. They do such dirty things. And people just disappear . . .”

“Not in Rome surely?”

“Not in Rome—yet. But I do not trust. . .”

After such talks as these it was easy to go to Axey and say to him, “I want you to help me about something. Something to do with money.”

His eyes lit up at the word; Sylvia thought with an inward smile, “Jews will be Jews. Now he looks like old Glarus.”

“Of course. Tell me.”

“It’s just a trifle. A silly little thing. But—”

She explained about the City of Swansea. “Of course I know what my Banker would say if I asked him; he’d say ‘War Loan.’”

“He would be very wise.”

“Yes, I know; but—”

“But you want a little adventure? So-o. A little risk. We do not make anything in this world without it. Let me think . . . Let me think . . .”

He lay back in his chair, his hands under his smooth chin, and stared at her. And Sylvia had the sudden uncomfortable conviction, “He’s not thinking about stocks and shares at all, he’s thinking about me. He’s looking right inside me, through and through me; he wants to know everything there is to know about me, just how sensible I am and just how foolish, just how far I am to be trusted. Now—why?” But before she could find any answer he sat forward again.

“Soh! I will tell you what you shall do . . . How much is the amount?”

“Four hundred pounds.”

“It is not a great deal . . . Still . . . You shall write to your Banker and tell him he shall buy you two thousand ordinary shares in Alnakers Limited.”

“Alnakers Limited. What on earth are they? They sound like a brewery.”

“They are not a brewery. They are makers of aeroplane parts. They are a small firm, but—they might do better . . . Soh! . . . You shall tell your banker to buy you two thousand of these things. He will buy them at four shillings. And you shall tell him to sell them for you at seven shillings and sixpence; not more, not less.”

Sylvia made a rapid calculation. “But—seven shillings and sixpence? That’s nearly double. That means I’ll make over three hundred pounds.”

Axey smiled. “It means that you would make that if the shares ever went up to seven shillings and sixpence.”

“But—you think—you advise—”

Axey smiled again. It was a kind smile; but once you had seen the fear that lurked behind it you could never again not see it.

Axey said, “Try it! Try it and we shall see.”

*  *  *

Axey lived at a house called Elding Grange; between this and Humbug Hall lay the little village of Brixter—incredibly unspoilt as only a Hertfordshire village within two miles of a bypass can be. It contained a horse-pond and an inn and a village green which might have been in the depths of the Cotswolds, and it also contained a vicarage. Here dwelt the widowed Mr. Galletly—who weekly called down the abusive fulminations of Rule. To Sylvia he seemed a pathetic figure as he stood in his pulpit striving to do his best; an intellect, not too bright in itself, struggling to communicate something of its hope, something of its faith, something of its charity to fellow-intellects of which the merely bovine were the least unpromising. To Rule he was an infuriating old idiot.

“That’s not preaching. Blah-blah-blah. Why doesn’t he strike? Christ told us to fight—”

“Did He?”

“Well—it’s the spirit of the thing.”

“But I thought you didn’t approve of fighting, Rule.”

“Oh, tschah! The trouble with you, Sylvia, is that you’re simply superficial. Trivial. I suppose all women are. You know quite well what I mean by fighting in the Christian Sense. I can’t stand quibblers!”

Mr. Galletly had a son, Robin; a fact of which Sylvia was not aware till she discovered, wandering in the lounge of Humbug Hall one day, a shy and forlorn boy in grey flannels and a greenish-blue sports jacket. He said, apologetically, “I did ring.”

Quite likely, thought Sylvia, you did; it was Pringle’s policy never to answer rings. (“If they’ve brought anything,” he said with much force, “they’ll put it down; if they’ve only come to talk, they can go away again; if they want money, we haven’t got any.”) Sylvia said, “I’m sorry; I’m afraid everyone’s out. Could I do anything?” And she thought, in her heart, “What a charming-looking boy; the first really young thing I’ve seen for ages.”

He thanked her effusively. “Are you—are you—?”

“I’m Sylvia Savage—Mrs. Tweed’s Secretary. If there’s any message—”

He shifted his feet which were encased in grey suède shoes, he looked round him, he positively blushed.

“It—it isn’t exactly a message. Perhaps—if it wouldn’t be troubling you—perhaps you could tell me if Miss Quarta is in?”

For the first time, thought Sylvia, I have heard Quashy called by her baptismal name; wonders will never cease. She said, “As a matter of fact, I’m afraid she’s gone out with the others.”

His embarrassment became so pronounced as to amount almost to torture; his nice little face—innocent as a young rabbit’s—became almost scarlet.

“Er—excuse me, I’m awfully sorry, but—I think perhaps she’s in the garden.”

“In the garden?”

“Er—yes. If I could perhaps go through. I think—I think perhaps she’s expecting me.”

Sylvia said, “Good gracious! Why didn’t you say so sooner? Go right through—I expect you know the way.”

He thanked her again and said that he did. Watching him pass through the house, his hat held carefully in one hand, his stick in the other, Sylvia thought with quite a pang, Of all the sweetest things! But—this innocent lamb and Quashy? Surely not!

There was an uproar of screams and screeches from the garden. “Oh, sweetness, why ever wasn’t I looking out for you! How too absolutely bloody-awful of me! Darling, darling, do get yourself a cushion and tell me all about it. . . There now! . . .”

Sylvia, going bemused to her room, thought wildly, “Good God!”

*  *  *

Sylvia wrote to Lettuce;—

“It goes on and it goes on. I can’t say I like it any better, but it isn’t any worse either. And I feel—I know—that it’s I who am at fault. I should see Rule as a manly (like you said) Christian and not as a cross between a would-be tough and a Salvation Army Captain. I should see Quashy as vivacious and moderne instead of as some sort of shrieking little bird that, now and then, pecks. I ought to be able to sympathise with poor Mr. Tweed and his lost Perfection—though it would be rather coals to Newcastle. I ought all these things and I can’t.

“Sorry you didn’t know more about Axey. There I could sympathise. I think he must have been a fine man—and I think his son’s probably a fine man still. All the same he’s the sword of Damocles these people out there can still hold over poor Axey. Are things all right in Rome or aren’t they? For Jews, I mean. If you saw his eyes sometimes—just dark with fear!

“I suppose I ought to take consolation from the thought that Portia and I are doing our best to changer tout cela. But one of the most dreadful things about here is that I can’t believe in the Concord Crusade. Hideous nerve; millions of the world’s most intelligent women believe in it; who am I, etc., etc. But I can’t help an awful feeling that it’s bunk—or at best platitudes. We go about saying, ‘Stop war! Man has invented the aeroplane, the radio, the X-ray; he can see small animals on the moon (or he could if there were any) and find out about insulin and the anopheles and turn Russells vipers into a cure for haemophilia and so on and so on, and then—then, mark you—he goes about shooting his fellows, throwing bombs on them, gassing them. It’s too nonsensical; it must stop.’ We say all this and it’s all first class truth but—what’s the good of saying it? I mean, it must all be obvious to any rudimentary intelligence and there are a great many above-rudimentary intelligences going about who still believe in war. We must assume that they see all our Concord Crusade stuff at least as well as we do and still want to have war. (How they can is a different question; fact remains that they do.) In which case we are dealing with uncomprehended minds and we want quite a new angle of argument to get at them. But where is that angle of argument? Not in Portia’s Concord Crusade; she just goes on shouting, ‘Too silly; stop it.’

“When she gets on to the Woman’s Part and says united womanhood could stop war she’s sounder. I believe, you know, we could. Not perhaps just in the Linklater-Aristophanes way by refusing ‘conjugal rights’—I think most women exaggerate the importance of these—but otherwise. Yes, but how? Portia says, ‘Co-operation’, ‘union of women to a common purpose’—but who ever heard of a union of women for a common purpose? If there were only two of us in the world, they’d be aiming at opposites—unless they both wanted the same man. And how, presuming you have unioned all these women, how do you make them effective? Portia tells them they don’t want to lose their men, they don’t want their little boys shot and their little girls gassed. Well, of course, they never did. But what can they do? What will they do? What can you make them do? In the old days when women had no vote there was something in all this ‘women-could-stop-it ‘ hurroosh; but you’ve given them the vote—and you can’t do more—and what result? Have they voted solid for the Government that was least likely to go to war? Have they shouted down every sort of military demonstration? Have they stood up and spoken pacifism on all possible occasions and at every street corner? Have they refused to walk out with men in uniform? Have they emptied the slops over the Territorials? Have they hell!

“So somehow I can’t throw my whole heart and soul into Portia’s Concord Crusade. I suppose it’s better than nothing but that’s about all—like the poor old League of Nations. If there’s not going to be another war, it’s the people who want war and believe in war who’ll have stopped it and not the others.

“And meantime poor old Gribbie gets six months for trying to poison himself because he was too fond of father. If that isn’t as savage a thing as was ever done in any war. . . .

“P.S.—Quashy seems to be having some sort of affair with the vicar’s son, Robin Galletly—the most charming boy, and as shy as a hedgehog. How? . . . Pringle—I told you about Pringle—says it’s been going on like this for months; seems to have started in midstream and stayed there. They don’t go forward, they don’t go back. Really, Lettuce, I don’t understand my own generation and there’s the fact.”

Cousin Lettuce read and re-read this lengthy effusion with a ‘V’ on her forehead and her prim lips tightly pursed. She thought Sylvia was a very clever girl.

*  *  *

One very hot afternoon—he would choose a hot afternoon—Rule appeared suddenly to Sylvia just after tea-time, carrying a bundle of untidy typescript.

“Here’s my book. You know, the one I told you about. About the ice-cream tricycle. I’ve called it ‘Pedalling Truth.’ There’s a rather clever play upon words there, if you can see it—’pedalling’ and ‘peddling’, you know.”

Sylvia took the papers, murmuring polite gratification: but she thought, “If you can see it.” One day, Rule, I’ll slap you.

“I don’t suppose you’ll make much of it.”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Well, there’s a good deal of pretty solid thought in it. I’ve dealt pretty closely with several economic problems. And then, as I said before, it’s a stark book—it doesn’t mince words. It’s truth.”

Sylvia was reflecting on the strange differences in personalities and the unmerited reactions they receive. Pringle, she thought, can say almost anything and one doesn’t take offence; Rule’s simplest utterances annoy. If half of Pringle’s stories are true, he has been a thoroughly bad lot; Rule is an earnest Christian if a trifle militant. Yet Pringle gets away with it and Rule doesn’t. Is it his hair? Or his teeth? Or is it just that women, being fashioned sexually, are completely incapable of forming sound and impartial judgments? She said with some asperity:

“I took a Course in Economics. And if it comes to not mincing words, you’ll find the competition nowadays pretty keen. Have you read—?”

He interrupted rudely. “You can’t understand that book unless I tell you my point of view. My point of view is this. The Christian nowadays can’t keep himself apart—like that old ass Galletly wrapped up in stained glass windows and the choir’s cassocks. He must come down and face facts. He must get down into the marketplace. That’s what our Master did. If he sees people fighting in the streets or—or committing sins in woods and things like that, well, he mustn’t turn aside. He must realise that it’s all part of things. If necessary he must fight in the streets himself” (“or commit sins in woods?” thought Sylvia). “He must be a bit in everything, if you see what I mean. That’s what I’ve written in that book.”

Sylvia thought, And what ten thousand others, my poor boy, have written already. She nearly said it, but was a hot afternoon. She hoped a discouraging silence might drive him away, but—no.

“The book will shock you. You must be prepared for that.”

“I’m not very easily shocked.”

“You haven’t read it yet.” With the superior smile of one who has Pedalled Truth. “I’m warning you because I want you to understand that I’ve not written about horrors or evil just for the sake of writing about them, but because they’re part of it all.”

Sylvia thought, How like all authors! They give you a book and say ‘Read this; I want your unbiassed opinion’; and then spend half an hour telling you just what you’re to think. Rule misinterpreted her hopeful silence as uncertainty.

“D’you think you’ve got my point of view now?”

“Oh, yes, Rule, I think you’ve made it quite clear.”

“Well, then, read it. But you’ll have to push on if you’re to finish it before I go away.”

“Are you going away, Rule?”

“Yes. I thought I told you.” Perhaps you did; and perhaps I’ve forgotten; does it matter? “I’m sure I told you.”

“No, Rule, not me.”

“Oh . . . Well, I’ve decided to go on a trip to Tangier. I want to see something of the Oriental mind.”

“Do you think you’ll see much of it in Tangier?”

“Yes, of course. I did want Palestine, but it’s rather impossible there just now with all these rows going on. But I daresay Tangier’s much the same.”

Sylvia said absently, “Oh, yes”, and thought he had gone at last. But he hadn’t. He kept fingering his typescript, as a parting lover must touch his mistress just once again.

“There’s a bit in that book—rather a special bit—about a talk I had with an unemployed fellow near Maidstone. It’s stark, that bit; yes, stark. But you’ll come to it. I mustn’t spoil it for you.”

Sylvia begged him not to and this time he did go away. For a few moments she sat day-dreaming, staring at the drawing-room wall. Then, resolutely, for the next hour, she applied herself to Pedalling Truth. It was almost exactly what she had expected. The monstrous conceit of poor Rule drenched it like a downpour, weighted it down like a ton of bricks. She thought, “Has he ever read anything, talked to anybody? Wasn’t he at school?” Pushing his tricycle from Maidstone to Hastings, from Hastings to Worthing, from Worthing to Aldershot—and selling, it appeared, precious little ice-cream—he had discovered the most astonishing things—all of which had been discovered ten thousand times before. He had talked to an unemployed man near Maidstone—who had quite manifestly pulled his leg; he had talked to a girl in Littlehampton who may have been a prostitute and must have been a cretin; he had discovered that there were bugs and syphilis and that people sometimes slept three in a bed. He hadn’t seen anything, he hadn’t done anything . . . Now suppose Pringle had pedalled that tricycle?

And you say to me, Master Rule, “If you can see it.”

You say to me, “I don’t suppose you’ll make much of it.” There is a show-down coming between you and me Master Rule, and it is coming one day soon. Yes, soon. You—you—Pedaller!

Sylvia looked up suddenly at a passing shadow and saw in front of her the ingenuous brightness of Robin Galletly. Instinctively she knew that he had been tip-toeing past in the hope of avoiding her and had just failed. Regretting it as much as he did, she greeted him kindly.

“Hullo! Have you come to see Quashy?”

He said, with his delicious shyness, “I—I’ve just been seeing her . . . It’s—it’s hot, isn’t it?”

“Horribly hot.”

“I thought she and I might have gone for a walk. But it’s really too hot for walking.”

“Much too hot.”

“There are some nice walks round here.” (He can’t get away; he wants to get away but he doesn’t know how. And the sweet—she looked closely into his face—he’s never even shaved yet.) “Do you like walking?”

“Not very much, I’m afraid. I’m very lazy.”

“Oh! I’m sure you’re not . . . Still, there are some nice walks.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. You can go across the fields from Brixter behind Elding right to the by-pass road. But then, of course, if you don’t care for walking . . .”

“Not very much. And it is hot, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes; awfully.”

“I think it must be going to thunder.”

“Oh, yes; I think so too.”

He petered out; in another moment, thought Sylvia, he’ll begin to tell me about another nice walk; I mustn’t let him.

“Well—goodbye, Mr. Galletly.” (He’d resent ‘Robin’.)

“Oh—er—goodbye.” He went off hurriedly, a little red. The sweetest little creature! But not for Quashy, never for Quashy . . . As Quashy must know well enough . . .

Are they mad or am I? . . .

*  *  *

So delighted was Sylvia with young Mr. Galletly that she spoke to Pringle about him. (She had already ceased to be surprised at the things one spoke of to Pringle.) Pringle said heartily—too heartily?—that Robin was very nice.

“I don’t believe you think so.”

“Yes, I do. He’s a very nice girl . . . He and the Bearded Lady, they’re a pair.”

“Pringle, isn’t it a bit—disloyal to talk like that?”

“Disloyal! Me!” For once Pringle looked really angry. “I was never disloyal to anyone in my life. Have I done a good day’s work for them or haven’t I?”

“You have indeed. And so have I in my way.” (Yes, I have, and got little thanks for it; Portia’s been very snappy all day and that translation from Lidove Noviny was frightful.)

“Well, then, I’ve a right to my opinions in my off time. And if you come asking me—”

“I know. I’m as bad as you are. Talking to the servants. Anyway I don’t think Robin Galletly’s at all suited to Quashy.”

Pringle took the implication. “Oh, Quashy’s not bad really.”

Conscience-smitten, Sylvia recalled the Cachet Printemps. “She was certainly kind to me the other day.”

“She is kind. When she forgets to be hard-boiled. Her type are like that. If they saw anyone really hard-boiled, they’d run a mile. When I think of old Dynamite Lil in Foo’s Bar in Singapore—”

Sylvia gave him a hard look. “Pringle, how old are you?”

“Forty-two.”

“You don’t look it. I should say, thirty.”

“All right, then, I’m thirty. As sure as my name’s Pringle.”

“And I don’t believe some of the other things either. Rangoon and the Burmese lady for instance.”

Pringle yawned. “One man’s gnat’s another man’s camel. Everybody’s got his own size of swallow. That’s the principle the con men go on. Fascinating game.”

“You’ll be telling me next you were a con man in Salt Lake City . . . But I do think the hotel bit must have been true. Otherwise you couldn’t—”

“Of course it was. My father had a hotel. He taught me from A to Z.”

“What hotel?”

“The Pins d’Azur at Cannes.”

Sylvia said in despair, “I never know what to believe. The Pins d’Azur—that was where Royalty used to go.”

“So they did—as long as there were any. But the place crashed in the Riviera slump and my old man died and it was then I took on Ye Old-e Standing Dragon. As I told you. “

“And I don’t believe all of that either. . . . Why on earth did you come here? It is rather a rum place.”

“I told you that weeks ago. But that’s why I came. I like oddities. I’m interested in human nature. Queer cases. And they are queer, aren’t they?”

Sylvia nodded; she had long forgotten that she was not indulging with a fellow-guest in the pleasant and guest-like pastime of host-abusing. “Sometimes I wonder which is the queerest. Rule perhaps.”

“What Rule wants,” said Pringle calmly, “is a woman.” Sylvia thought, If Rule had said that about Pringle how shocked I should have been! But one isn’t shocked with Pringle somehow. Besides, it’s probably quite true about Rule. She said nothing.

“All this ice-cream barrowing,” said Pringle. “And all this missionary business. They’re just excess energy. One of these days he’ll wake up and go on a bender, and—whoopee! what a bender it’ll be.”

Sylvia said musingly, “I believe you’re right. He’s sort of—bottled-up, isn’t he?. . . It is a rum household.”

“It’s rummer than that.”

“Meaning?”

“Oh, nothing. Just that it’s so rum that I wouldn’t wonder at anything that happened here . . . . Don’t go into the garden too much with the Bearded Lady.”

“Pringle! Really you go too far.”

“He will—if you give him the chance.”

“I think you’re a beast!”

“All right, then, I’m a beast. . . Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.” But she turned away and came back. “Pringle, joking apart, there was one thing I did mean to say. . . . Those sounds in the night; they are mice, aren’t they?”

He met her eyes unflinchingly. “To the best of my knowledge and belief. But then, I never hear them. I live over the garage with the sparrows.”

“I keep on hearing them. Two or three times now. They don’t sound like mice.”

“Must be mice. Mice are nothing. If you’d heard the plague rats running round my bungalow in Colaba. Bubonic—”

“Oh, you’re impossible! Goodnight!”

VI

Mr. George Cadman, the Manager of the Fenchurch and Moorgate Bank, turned over once again the curious letter he had received by that morning’s post. It had a blend of naïveté and assurance that puzzled him—even though he knew his correspondent very well. “Dear Caddy, I want you to buy me two thousand Alnakers Limited. Please sell them at seven and sixpence, not more, not less.” Sounds, he thought, as if she were repeating something somebody else had said. But—

Mr. Snell, the Bank’s broker, was sitting on the edge of the table rather dejectedly smoking a cigarette. Mr. Cadman turned to him.

“I say, Snellie, I’ve got an order to buy some Alnaker Ordinaries. Is there anything to go for in them?”

Mr. Snell said not that he knew of. “Of course aircrafts generally are a good enough market just now.”

“The things seem to be about par. I suppose they’re not likely to go down?”

“Not unless everything goes down. You know what it is just now.” He jingled the coins in his pocket. “It’s a small company, they haven’t much capital. But they’re highly-geared; the ordinaries would do well if they got some business in. But if your client’s interested in aircrafts, why not buy Bristols? Or Faireys.”

“Because she wants me to buy Alnakers. She seems to see a rise in them.”

“It’s more than I do.” Mr. Snell went out.

Mr. Cadman sighed. “I suppose she’s been listening to somebody . . . Oh, well; I suppose I’d better do it for her. But I’ll tell her to sell if they drop ninepence . . . No, sixpence.” He rang a bell.

Presently he rang again—twice. This time his confidential clerk came in. Mr. Cadman said, “Look here, Williams.”

Williams read to himself. “To the Manager, Fenchurch and Moorgate Bank. Dear Sir, I should be deeply obliged if you would let me know the present address of Miss Sylvia Savage, formerly of 7 Ratisbon Avenue, N.6. I am, Sir, Yours faithfully, Basil Caldecott.”

“Tell the gentleman, Williams, just how things stand. Explain kindly but firmly that the Bank is not at liberty—”

Williams said, “Yes, sir,” and went out. Mr. Cadman, sighing again, wondered if it was nearly time for a glass of sherry . . .

VII

At Bridstead School, in Sussex, they were feverishly unpacking trunks, working out timetables, wrestling with the problem of how to make a practical Soccer Eleven out of three remnants (backward but sizeable) and eight promotions (intelligent but shrimps). On account of those staggered vacations they were doing this in mid-August instead of mid-September, a month ahead of the other Preparatory Schools of England; but the travail was none the less severe. Basil Caldecott was occupied—or he was supposed to be occupied—with such problems as whether, by shifting Blagdon to right back, a ruined defence could be restored, and whether Siffly, for instance, could possibly be utilised as centre forward. Conscientiously—for he was the nicest of nice fellows—Basil did struggle with these cruces, but his heart was not in them. He was persuaded that this deficiency had escaped the attention of his superiors; but—as do so many of us in just these circumstances—he deceived himself. For the Head’s wife said at dinner that evening to the Head (that dinner whose savoury odour roused the most murderous and Bolshevik feelings in Messrs. Blagdon, Siffly and their peers), “Mr. Caldecott’s not looking much the better for his holiday anyway.”

The Head, lying, said he hadn’t noticed it.

“He looks like a ghost. I expect he’s been overdoing it. As I’ve told you a hundred times, Stephen, I’m positive more people kill themselves by being fit than by not being fit.”

The Head sighed; a hundred times was a conservative estimate.

“You will confuse, my dear, physical fitness with physical excess. Any excess—”

“He’s looking very low anyway . . . And that reminds me, the younger Radlett’s starting boils again. Already.”

“And he always will start them so long as he refuses to eat green vegetables. Remind me to see that he gets some. Oh, and by the way, Hallam’s teeth—”

By way of the dermal and dental failings of Masters Radlett and Hallam they left Mr. Caldecott. The Head was relieved; for he knew only too well what was the matter with Mr. Caldecott. All the previous evening, round and round the field, he had heard about that.

“But you see, sir, I don’t know what’s happened to her. I don’t know where she is. It’s driving me nearly demented.”

“But, my dear Caldecott, haven’t you realised that it’s only the people who’re all right that one doesn’t hear about? Directly anything happens, you hear quickly enough. The Police and the newspapers—”

“I don’t know. At the time of the Brighton Trunk Murder there were one hundred and sixty-three girls missing that nobody knew anything about.”

“Yes, yes; very probably. But not your sort of girl. . . . Come, come; you don’t seriously suggest—”

“No, sir . . . But you know, her father shot himself.”

“Yes. Of course. Most distressing. . . . But don’t you think, perhaps, Caldecott, that after such a trying experience, she may just want to be left in peace for a little? Mayn’t she feel that even her best friends—. . . One often does after a tragedy.”

“If that were so, sir, why did she write me saying that after—well, after what she called these ‘revelations’—everything must be all over and I must just forget and—and all that sort of rot?”

The Head, drawing at his cigar, thought, She did did she? And a very sensible young woman. Making too much of it, of course, but still—an undesirable connection—not at all a desirable connection. Especially for a Games Master . . . Aloud, he said briskly—for he was growing very tired of the subject—

“Try to believe, Caldecott, that she merely wants to be left alone for a little and that you will be doing her the best service and the best kindness just by leaving her alone. Throw yourself into your work again as hard as you can. Anyone who has been through tragic experience will tell you that there’s nothing like work for—” And so on and so on.

But later, in his study with his cigar, the Head thought, “And a damned good thing for Caldecott. Of course the girl’s absurdly exaggerating the effects, but—ours is a calling in which one slanderous tongue outweighs years of good work and a bushel of encomia. Not a desirable connection. Better out of it.” And there was, of course, also the consideration that young Caldecott was an excellent games master, that he seemed content meantime with a pittance of two hundred and thirty pounds per annum and that the longer he deferred such ambitions as matrimony and House-mastership—well, definitely the better.

But Basil himself was by no means so well satisfied, by no means so ready to accept defeat. In his pocket-book was hidden what he considered the most unkind and offensive letter ever written—and it was not written by Sylvia. “The Manager presents his compliments to Mr. Caldecott and begs to inform him that the Bank is not at liberty to divulge the addresses of its constituents without a written authority.” The Manager! Pah! Some pompous great fat brute (poor little George Cadman!) smoking a cigar and sneering at any poor devil with an overdraft and boot-licking any soap-boiler with ten thousand pounds. Who wanted his beastly compliments or his begging information? Swine!

But it does show one thing, thought Basil—it shows that Sylvie’s alive; and what’s more, that cigar-stinking Bottomley knows where she is. If she’d been dead, he must have said so; and if he hadn’t known anything about her, he’d have begged to inform me about that. So that’s something . . . And if she hadn’t written me that cheque to cash for her that day at Hindhead—ah, that day at Hindhead!—I wouldn’t even have found out as much. But I remembered the Bank all right; yes, I did . . . But did I ever seriously suppose that she was dead or that the Bank wouldn’t know?. . . Am I really any further on at all? . . . No.

But I’m not beaten yet; my God, I’m not!

In his tiny room at Bridstead, littered with bats and hockey-sticks and First Eleven shirts and bottles of iodine and embrocation, Basil set his brain—not perhaps the most incisive in England—seriously to work. Now let me see! Over and over the same old ground. I daresay the Head’s right and she wants to be left alone, but I don’t want to let her alone. I won’t accept that idiotic all-over letter; I must get hold of her and tell her not to be a ridiculous ass, that the rotten show doesn’t make a farthing’s difference, that it’s brought us closer together rather than otherwise, made us really one. I can write to the Bank and say all this and I expect she’d get it—I suppose that blighter would forward her letters, of course he would—but that’s not good enough. She’d just ignore it. No, I must find her and see her. How can I?

I can’t go to the Police, of course; not yet anyway.

Let’s see again. Is there anyone who’d know? Worst of it is, I didn’t know their friends very much; and anyway, if she’s bolted from me, she must have bolted from them too. I don’t even know about relatives; oh why didn’t I take more interest in that part of it at the time? But who could suppose—? One doesn’t bother about relatives, one just doesn’t. Anyway, I don’t believe she had many. Her mother—that beautiful woman in the picture in the dining-room; wonder what’s become of that?—was dead, and she did say they hadn’t kept up with her mother’s people. Old Cesar wasn’t a chap to hang on to relatives either; my God! who would have thought, who would have thought? Cesar! . . . Well, never mind that now . . .

Isn’t there anybody? There was that cousin-thing; “Lettuce” Sylvie called her and it was a dashed good name for her, too—all green just like a salad and hair just like mayonnaise. But of course “Lettuce” wouldn’t be her real name so it doesn’t get me much further. And I can’t remember her surname; of course, no one ever used it when we met. . . . I could put an advertisement in the Daily Telegraph; “Lettuce; Please communicate.” Not much good. Still, I could.

Hold on, though. There was something about her surname. It must have rhymed with ‘virgin’ because I remember that old rip Cesar making a rhyme about it. Miss Tum-te, Who tum-te-te, tum-te-te, virgin. Now there’s something! There can’t be very many names that rhyme with ‘virgin’. Burgin, Curgin, Sturgeon, Spurgeon; it wasn’t any of these. But she lived in London; St. John’s Wood way somewhere; she’s almost bound to be in the Telephone Book. I’ll get her. Of course we haven’t a London Telephone Directory in this God-awful place, but I can write for one. I will; I’ll do it now. I’ll get that ‘virgin’ name if I have to read through every blessed name in the list. Two volumes, eh? It’ll be a bit of a job. But I’ll do it. If I read, say, four thousand names an evening? I could do it while I’m taking Prep. But there may be a million names. Oh, Lord! two hundred and fifty evenings . . . Still, I’ll do it; I must. I could thin it down—process of elimination first. All the Be-, Bi-, Bu-, Ce-, Ci-, Cu-’s and so on . . . Or even start boldly with Bi-, Ci-, Di-. I’ll get the book anyway.

. . . It was a name something like “Pirbright”, But of course that doesn’t rhyme with ‘virgin’. Oh, God, my head! . . .

VIII

Meanwhile, at Humbug Hall, life revolved upon its curious course and Sylvia, alternating between self-pity and self-reproach, revolved with it. In the former mood, she asked herself, Why, in addition to everything else, must I be saddled with a household like this?; then, more reasonably, why not? ‘Fie! Fie! All is gone.’ If everything has crashed, if everything is terminated, what do a few oddities and queer cases matter one way or another? Indeed, there’s something to be said for them as a diversion . . . In the self-reproach antitheses—which arrived after some specially caustic inner comment upon the contradictory Quashy or some more than usually unguarded conversation with the seductive Pringle—she blamed herself bitterly for a failure in sympathy, a failure in duty. This battle of the moods raged most often round the figure of Pelham Tweed himself; for he could be very charming, he could be very pathetic—and there was always that sentimental affinity which said “His case is mine.” Yet, when the east wind blew, there was something particularly pusillanimous and loathsome in all this “dead and finished” business; something sharply intolerable in this doctrine that an hour’s “Perfection” must blast all subsequent years. It was a damnable doctrine, that—if only because it looked so speciously true. Seeing Pelham on a Sunday—the little bright-eyed faun peering over that beard of glossy auburn threads—Sylvia had the old honest impulse to give him a good shaking: seeing him come home from his office—and a long weary drive he had of it just because Portia would live in this back-o’-beyond—with the face of a tired Christus and that sad droop of the shoulders, she flew to his side. Between the Man Who Was and the Bearded Lady she was kept in continual unease.

And Quashy flitted hither and yon like an irritating bat, saying, “Darling, I must rush!”—and then not rushing; saying, “Angel, what a sweet hat!” when she was obviously thinking of something quite different; sprawling, fidgeting, squeaking, snapping; like a body, it seemed, undirected by any controlling brain . . . And Portia clashed and tinkled her Mexican silver and worked one like a slave, hunting up the transactions of this or that kindred Crusader and writing interminable correspondences to sister organisations from Bucharest to Philadelphia. She was tending now—was that perhaps Axey?—to steer the Crusade against anti-Semitism; letters from maltreated Jews, their societies and their representatives, came pouring in in shoals. Jews: what should one feel about Jews? It was hard work anyway and the metallic Portia made no allowances . . . And Rule bullied and dominated, shouting one down, the he-Christian, the apostle of the stark, making no secret of his conviction that women were a sorry lot and that among women Sylvia herself was a rather poorish specimen. It must come to a show-down there very soon . . .

And someone did walk through the house in the nights.

Not every night—every third or fourth night, perhaps. Sometimes just after midnight, sometimes not till nearly two. Well—what about it? It clearly wasn’t burglars; it couldn’t be a ghost (or couldn’t it?); it might be a somnambulist; it might be nothing at all. Perhaps Pelham visited Portia or Portia Pelham (but then their rooms—they had separate rooms—weren’t in that part of the house). Perhaps Pringle took a conscientious look-round—though why on earth? Perhaps it was mice; if so, they wore heeled shoes. In any case, why bother; it was evidently harmless, nothing ever happened after it . . . But one of these nights I won’t be able to stand it; one of these nights I must see.

Oh, this is a difficult household; I doubt, I seriously doubt, if I shall be able to stick it much longer.

She wrote to Lettuce—

“It’s true that we are being sacrificed, as Rule said, to Portia’s vanity or rather to Portia’s whim to live in a country mansion—for it can’t be much sop to her vanity to run a mansion as this mansion is run. More than half the rooms are empty—not a stick of furniture; and the attics and stables and outhouses are almost eerie. It’s just that she wants to live in the country with a grand-sounding address—which is pretty hard on her husband who has to drive to Whitehall and back every working day. On the other hand, we’re not doing it on the cheap either; far, far from it. Eats and drinks and the furnishings where there are furnishings are all regardless. And we have streams of chars, dailies, odd-job men and window-cleaners and what not; and you know what that comes up to—what with their elevenses and their regular meals and what they take home and all. Three cars—Rule and Quashy have one between them now—and all used ad lib. It makes one wonder where it all comes from; so far as I can ascertain there’s only Mr. Tweed’s salary and that can’t be very much. What Portia makes lecturing she spends thrice over.

“They must pay Pringle something fabulous, and they’d need to, for he does everything and we’d be absolutely dished without him. And arising out of that I can’t think why he stays here. He must have money of his own—he doesn’t dress on his pay anyway—and whatever else is true about him, he does know the house-running and food-providing business from A to Z. Why wear himself to death here? He says it’s because he’s interested in queer people—and heaven knows he gets them all right in H.H. . . But that doesn’t seem enough. There must be some inducement, some very strong inducement. Oh, well, it’s none of my business; I don’t suppose I’ll be here very long myself.”

Lettuce read, pursing up her lips and thinking sensibly, “Oh, yes, you will. You’re interested and intrigued. What a fortunate thing the place has turned out so queer—I knew they were odd but I never thought so odd as all this. It’ll keep you interested, my dear; it’ll be the saving of you.”

Yes; it interested you during the day, it kept you from thinking. But at nights you dreamt and dreamt and dreamt. Sometimes you dreamt of a voice saying, “Sylvie, Sylvie, you’re the loveliest, sweetest, nicest . . . you’ve no idea just how absolutely wonderful you are . . . When we’re married I’ll get a House and then . . .” And sometimes you dreamt of a shattered head hanging limp, upside-down. And then you were on your knees pouring brandy into poor Gribbie—slopping and spilling it but getting it in because Gribbie had had no time to put in his teeth. And then you realised that you weren’t dreaming at all; you were awake and remembering.

And then, quite likely, you heard these sounds again. In the passage, on the landing, someone went carefully along. Not quite stealthy, not really frightening; but just as if someone moved there with considerate quietness so as not to wake the sleeping house . . .

*  *  *

The show-down with Rule came unexpectedly in the end, but it was a gratifying show-down when it did.

It began—badly—on a hot morning. The metal of which Portia was composed appeared to be of some unusual type which contracted with heat instead of expanding; on hot days she tightened, became more unbending, gave forth when struck by any passing exasperation a shriller note. And so today.

“Sylvia, what have you done with that pamphlet from Moscow about the Russian Women’s Athletic Corps?”

“I don’t think you ever gave it to me.”

“Of course I did. Look for it.”

Obediently Sylvia looked. “It isn’t here.”

“It must be there. I gave it to you with that letter from the Peace Propaganda Club in Boston. If you would just adopt some system of order—”

Sylvia said, crossly and coldly, “You never gave it to me; I never saw it.”

“I’m sure I did. Or—well, wait a minute. I believe that wretched boy Rule took it away to read. Because it said something about Atheism. And of course now he’s gone out. It must be in his work-room somewhere. Do go and retrieve it, Sylvia.”

Sylvia went, in no very equable temper; Portia had a knack of rubbing you the wrong way . . . As if it were my fault she gave the thing to Rule. And I don’t want to go poking into his room . . .

Rule’s “work-room” proved, as might have been expected, a piggery. It contained very little furniture except two large tables, one of which was littered from end to end with piles of papers while the other was unembarrassed save for a neat little model aeroplane of wood and cardboard evidently recently glued and set-out to dry. A new side-light on Rule? But Sylvia remembered that he was supposedly interested in mechanics; there was a section in Pedalling Truth—a very self-satisfied section—where he took the ice-cream tricycle to pieces and successfully reassembled them.

There being no obvious signs of the Moscow Athletic Women, Sylvia began to delve among the accumulations on Rule’s congested table. And presently she found the pamphlet—tucked away under the yellowing and dusty piles of an engineering journal. But as she was pulling it out there peeped coyly from under the same pile—tucked there perhaps at the same time—something that would have caused the Moscow Athletics to open their collective eyes. It was a coloured picture of a lady—a salmon-pink lady of striking developments clad in a very frilly set of abbreviated underclothes and exchanging wise-cracks with a gentleman in corresponding deshabille. Sylvia had the merest glance at it, but that glance was enough. The colouring adopted by the artists and the printers of La Vie Parisienne is individual; if you have once seen it—and Sylvia had quite often seen it—you cannot mistake.

Sylvia’s good-humour was instantly restored; she found herself laughing. Of course it was a little shocking; it made Salvation-Army Rule a little monstrous; but—and here was the delight of it—it made him still more childish. Salmon-pink gamines from La Vie Parisienne; oh, Rule, Rule, my ponderous Truth-Pedaller! She turned happily to go—and ran straight into the ponderous Truth-Pedaller entering his doorway. And immediately it was obvious that the show-down was at hand.

“What do you want here? What are you doing here?” Sylvia, smiling, said nothing.

“What are you after in my room? Poking round . . .”

“Your mother sent me to get this.” She displayed the athletic Russians.

“I don’t believe it.” He thrust forward his great head and a haystack of black hair fell forward with it like a cataract. “You came poking here to see what you could find . . . I can’t stand spies.”

For reasons good or otherwise, the word “spy” is one of the few epithets in our tongue that has a really precipitating effect. It precipitated now in Sylvia. Her laughter died away; she turned crimson; she stepped forward.

“How dare you say a thing like that to me! How dare you!”

He crumpled a little but only a little.

“Well—isn’t it true?”

“It is not true. I am employed by your mother; if she sends me to your room to find a book you should have given back to her yourself, I have to do it, haven’t I? And will you apologise—?”

Rule shuffled; a little uneasily—was he thinking of the salmon-pink lady and wondering where she was?—he said, “How long have you been here?”

“Just as long as it took me to find this.”

“I don’t believe it. You’ve been poking around—”

Sylvia’s warmth changed to ice. She said in a voice she hardly knew herself, “Very well! You’ve called me a spy and a liar. Now will you come straight downstairs and tell me that before Mrs. Tweed?”

“Of course I won’t!” But uneasily.

“Yes, you will. Or shall I ask her to come up here?”

She moved towards the door; and quite suddenly he collapsed.

“Oh, no; don’t do that . . . Hold on a moment . . . I didn’t mean . . . Only it’s a thing I’m very particular about—my room, I mean. You see, there are a lot of valuable papers lying about—plans and manuscripts and things.”

Sylvia fixed him with a penetrating eye.

“I don’t know about valuable. I daresay there are a lot of things you don’t want to be seen.”

He collapsed so utterly that she was at first conscience-stricken, then terrified. Good heavens! what may there be in this room? What may he think I’ve found? She said hastily, “Not that I’ve seen any of them.”

He recovered a little. “Oh, well . . . It’s only that I can’t stand people poking about—”

“Nobody was poking about.” (Shall I tell him about the Pink Lady? No, we’ll keep that card, we’ll keep it.) “Nobody was poking about. And are you going to apologise to me or not?”

From downstairs came Portia’s trumpet-like outcry.

“Sylvia! Sylvia! What on earth are you doing? Haven’t you found it yet?”

Sylvia said, facing the enemy, “Well? . . . Quick!” He shook the black hair from his forehead.

“Oh, tschah . . . Oh, well . . . I’m sorry.”

Sylvia called loudly, “I’ve got it; just coming.” She said to Rule, “Then don’t you speak to me like that again. Or to anybody else.” She went quickly downstairs with the Moscow Athletics—and the honours . . . For when I said I hadn’t seen anything, he didn’t quite believe me. He never will; he’ll always wonder. I’ll keep you wondering, Master Rule, I’ll keep you wondering all right . . .

But here, she thought as she hammered Portia’s typewriter, here is a new light on Rule. Here is our Evangelist higher-thinker playing with model aeroplanes and secreting cuttings from La Vie. As lots of boys of his age and his repressions might do, but as the Rule so far experienced would not do . . . I don’t mind; it shows he’s human; perhaps one could make something out of him after all. But—does everyone in this house wear a mask and a disguise? Rule, Pringle, the Man Who Was perhaps even Quashy? Well did I name it Humbug Hall!

And the adjuncts, too. Axey, for instance. What about Axey?

I don't think Axey. . . .

*  *  *

Always now when Axey came to Humbug Hall—and that was three or four times a week—Sylvia asked him about Conrad. Almost always he gave her the same reply, “He is well, thank God—meantime.” Always he thanked her punctiliously with his gracious Continental bow.

“It is good of you to ask.”

“It isn’t at all. I hate to think of your being worried.”

“Ach, what is worry? It is the air that nowadays we breathe. How strange to think that only a short time ago—when my son Conrad” (‘my-son-Conerat’) “was a little boy—we had so little worry.”

“We hadn’t Hitler either. Or Mussolini.”

“Ach, no! Il Duce and der Fuehrer and the worries; these are our twentieth-century world.”

Always, at the name of Conrad, he shrank a little, aged a little, lost something of his proud dignity. He became for a moment an old man, running down the streets of a Ghetto, looking back over his shoulder. . .

Curious and interested, Sylvia set herself to find out about Axey. But it was very difficult; he had his business in the City of London; a financial business mostly but he was interested in chemical industries also. At any rate he did well out of both. Elding Grange was as different from Hambling Hall as one place of similar size could be from another; it was a polished, perfected place, its gardens tended and orderly, its lawns like billiard-cloth; a suitable staff wandered about its rooms, barely employed. Whether he made it from his business or whether he were living on investments saved from the wreck, Axey was unquestionably a rich man. But personal details were difficult to come by. He was a Jew driven out of Germany; bien entendu—but what more?

Portia, approached with delicate and tactful questions, was unhelpful. “He’s my husband’s friend really. I can’t tell you much about him.”

“He admires your work very much anyway.”

“He has said some very kind things.” Portia was agreeably flattered. “Of course he has seen suffering—the most terrible suffering.”

“It must be dreadful for him having his son out there.”

Portia hardened. “I don’t think the son is in any actual danger. Not in Rome. In fact, I should think he was very comfortable.”

“I should imagine they were all in danger more or less in any totalitarian country. All Jews, I mean.”

“Axey probably exaggerates. You can’t quite tell with Jews. They’re always considering impressions, they’ve always something at the back of their minds—”

Sylvia desisted crossly. You lap up his impressions anyway; and so long as the thing at the back of his mind is admiration of you—. . .

Rule, conciliated by a request for his opinion, said only, “I can’t stand Jews.” Quashy one left out as not worth questioning. One would have liked to ask more of Pelham, but any conversation with Pelham was apt to develop into a session of sympathy, a thesis on Perfection, a monologue from the Dead; one thought twice before one risked it.

Pringle, of course, had his views. He said, “Macjudah? I don’t know much about him, but I’ll bet you one thing.”

“Well, what’s that?”

“I’ll bet you this house to a black beetle that he’s lent us money.”

“Lent us money? Why on earth should he do that?”

“Because we’re spending a hell of a lot and taking in precious little. And because non-taking spenders have to borrow. And because Macjudah’s handy.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“I don’t ask you to. But if you’ve a nice, kind, rich gentleman living next door who admires your wife—and I don’t mean anything nasty, mind—don’t you touch him for a little advance?”

“No.”

“The Bearded Lady does, I’ll bet.”

“The—oh, I do wish you wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t what? Oh, my names?”

“Yes. They’re just vulgar.”

“So they are and so am I. And don’t you go despising vulgarity, Sylvia. We all do a lot of vulgar things every morning and every night because that’s the way God made us. It’s a sort of lowest common denominator, and if the classes are ever to come together that’s what we have to depend on. And the sexes. I’ve kept a hotel—I know. At dinner they’re all talking very highbrow and pure; but when they’re served the coffee separately in the smoke-room and the drawing-room, what are both lots doing? Swapping smutty stories.”

“You’re not telling me very much about Mr. Haase.”

“I’m telling you everything about him. I’m telling you he’s human and so are we. And that means that he’s getting a little bit of something from us and we’re getting a little bit of something back from him.”

“Yes, but what and which?”

“Ah, now you’re asking.”

A little shamefacedly, Sylvia realised that quite a part of her interest in Axey was connected with and centred round Alnakers Limited Ordinaries . . . I’ve trusted him with a big sum of money—for me; naturally I’m interested in finding out about him. He would never possibly cheat me, of course; but I’ve backed his knowledge and judgment and how much are these really worth? I’ll ask him right out one day: yet I don’t like to; it looks as if I didn’t trust.

Meantime at any rate, Alnakers Limited appeared to be doing nothing. For some days after the transaction Sylvia, eagerly studying the Stock Exchange columns of The Times—copies of which and of many other journals lay strewn about Humbug Hall in idle profusion—could find no mention of them at all; eventually, however, she ran them to earth in a sub-section labelled “Not officially quoted”—a phrase which quite needlessly caused her a certain amount of anxiety. Even there they appeared very seldom and even on these rare occasions, occupied very little space in comparison with most other items. “Alnakers (4/-); 4/-, -/6” was the usual statement, which became so monotonously tiresome that presently Sylvia gave up looking for it. But on the morning after the showdown with Rule, coming down early after a troubled night—dreams and those noises again—she bethought her of her gamble.

And this morning the Times said, in that “Not Officially Quoted” column—

“Alnakers (4/-); 4/9, -/11, 5/0, -/3, -/4½ -/6, -/9, -/4½, -/10½”

It didn’t convey very much to Sylvia.

IX

“I say, you chaps, did you see what that book was that old Caldy was reading to-night in Prep?”

“No. Did you?”

“Course I did; I picked it up for him when it fell.”

“Well, what was it?”

“Guess. You’ll never.”

“Latin Diccy.”

“No.”

“Bound volume of Punch.”

“No.”

“Bound volume of the Pink ’un.”

“Oh, shut up; don’t be funny. . . . Well, I’ll tell you. It was the London telephone book.”

“The London telephone book?”

“Yes. And he was reading it.”

“Reading it? He couldn’t have been . . . I mean, you can’t.”

“Yes, he was. He was reading it all through Prep. I was watching him.”

“Golly! He must be going off his rocker.”

“Bats.”

“Oh, definitely. . . . Bats. . . .”

*  *  *

Directory of Shipowners; Dirs; Dirsztay; Dirty Dick’s, Wine and Spirits . . . Well, that washes out the D-i-r’s anyway. Better just have a look at the E-r-g’s and E-r-j’s, though I don’t think . . . Ergis, Joe and Sons, Stick Benders—what rum trades there are in the world. E-r-j’s; nil . . . Well, on we go.

Get on with your Prep there, Waters; what are you staring at?

On we go. First the F-e-r’s; nearly all Fergusons or Fergussons, bless ’em. Nothing doing there. So, the F-i-r’s. I don’t think it’s here either; not many of ’em anyway. Firby; Fircroft; Firderer; Fire Brigade, London County Council; Firebrace; Firenheat Ltd.; Firestone Tyres; Firjohn . . . Firjohn! . . . FIRJOHN! Oh, thank God, oh thank God! That was it, that was it, that was it!” Miss Lettuce Firjohn, Can successfully claim to be a vir-john; Which her aunt, Unfortunately can’t.” That was Cesar’s little rhyme; that was it. Oh, thank God, I’ve got it, I’ve got it. “Firjohn, Miss L.J., 62 Flamborough Court, N.W.8. MAIda Va 9743.” Calloo, callay! It’s her.

And then crash! went the heavy book through nerveless hands to the floor. And out rushed young Waters sprawling and scrabbling obsequiously to recover it. And no doubt telling all his pals what it was and the whole lot of them thinking Mr. Caldecott balmy.

To hell with young Waters!

X

Early in September there came a spell of thundery weather; cool mornings steeped in mist that was already autumnal; then the sun breaking through; then the day swelling and swelling in a wash-house heat till, round about tea-time or between tea and dinner it burst with roarings and blazings and a drive of rain. Daily one said, “That’s cleared the air anyway at last,” but one deceived oneself. Daily the night thickened again to a jelly of heat, a young dusky moon rolling in the doldrums of motionless clouds, an oppression as of a hand pushed down upon one’s mouth. The newspapers said that it was very bad for those on holiday; Sylvia knew it was very bad for her.

For in those airless nights sleep—which had of late been kinder—took wing again and fled, it seemed, for ever. Sylvia, much against her wish and much against her better judgment, went back to the remains of her vegenins and bromides; used them all up without any very obvious effect. There was very little dreaming now—and a great deal of remembering. That bleak devil of depreciation who arrives punctually with the third hour of the morning sat nightly by her pillow, sketching with his sooty fingers picture after picture of failure, ruin, chaos, despair. He drew offensively hostile caricatures of Pelham Tweed, of Rule and Quashy and even of Portia; confronting and complementing these with contemptuous daubs of an insignificant incompetent Sylvia. I am at sea and a failure; I can’t really stay on in this house with these people; I’m not even making a success of the work. I must change, I must go. Yes, but where? I have nowhere, nobody, nothing.

. . . A bright little sketch by the demon of a bedroom lit by flooding electricity; a something sprawling on the bed, Gribbie half-dead on the floor . . . A forcibly executed sequence—rather reminiscent of the Witch-Queen’s flight in Snow-white—of Sylvia herself fleeing, fleeing, through rocks and blue lightning and downpours, towards some unguessable abyss . . .

And then, as if all this were not sufficient, these noises in the night.

They are nothing, of course; whatever they are, they are not my business . . . Easy to say; not so easy to believe when one has lain awake till dawn every night for a week, and that three-in-the-morning demon sits gibbering by one’s bed. The noises, which reason asserted were something normal, something insignificant, some laughable component in the general oddity of Humbug Hall, began to lay hold of the imagination . . . I cannot lie quietly through them for many more nights; I cannot lie quietly through them for one more night.

They were always the same; and always at some hour between midnight and two in the morning. At that hour someone—something—walked very quietly from the west end of the house, the stable-garage-and-outhouse end of the house, along the passage past Sylvia’s door and away. First, normal and obvious explanation—someone going to the bathroom, someone whose odd habit it was to go to the bathroom at that unusual hour once in three nights or so. No law against it. But in that case (a) the person stayed in the bathroom for the rest of the night for the steps never came back; and (b)—an even more fatal objection—all the rooms at the west end of the house were unfurnished and empty. Sylvia herself was its most westerly occupant—except, presumably, Pringle who lived somewhere away above the garage . . . Well, then, it was Pringle; who, for some reason, came in at the west end of the house, wandered through it on a tour of inspection and proceeded homewards by some other route. But why one earth should any sensible being—and Pringle was an eminently sensible being—preform any such ridiculous act?

On the fourth night of Sylvia’s sleepless week, the noises came very clearly and just after the distant church clock in Brixter had struck one. Perhaps they were not really clearer than usual, but Sylvia, having now heard them so often, had formed a sort of composite impression, could make a whole of patches, could supply missing links. So on this night at any rate it was clear to her that someone—someone with a light tread but quite certainly wearing shoes or heeled slippers—tip-toed or walked very cautiously from somewhere about ten yards to the west of Sylvia’s room, past her door and away. The cautiousness did not amount to stealth; it was not the creeping exploring progress of a burglar or a murderer; It—whoever It was—had perhaps no wish to be caught but was not really seriously afraid. Moreover—and naturally—It knew its way perfectly even on the darkest night; It never knocked against any of the obstacles that beset the passage. It moved with a purpose, It went straight ahead, It had a right to be there but It didn’t want to be heard. This was the composite picture presented to Sylvia by her united impressions.

It must be Pringle, It could only be Pringle; but what was he up to? And for a solidly built, if agile, man, didn’t he walk lightly!

One o’clock from the Brixter church; and then—rustle, rustle, slip, scrape, the faintest of taps—It passed. And suddenly Sylvia’s nerves took hold of her; I cannot stand this any longer. Too late tonight, but if it happens once again—as it will happen—up I get and see what it is. No use telling me it’s nothing, no use telling me to lie still, as I’ve always lain still so far, and not be a silly. I cannot stand it any more. I must know.

And it did happen again; two nights later.

It was the most oppressive night of that terrible week; Sylvia had read till she could read no more and then had switched off her bedside light and lain staring, staring at the dim grey-green square of the window, on which, as on a screen, there progressed a cinema of horrors. She felt herself moist with a warm sweat; I’m going to be ill, perhaps I’m going mad. Already twice she had told herself, “If these—sounds—come again tonight, I get up and tackle them, come what may.” So when the sounds did come, she was prepared.

As if to save her suspense, they came unusually early; it was barely half-past twelve. In fact Sylvia thought at first that her imagination was inventing them—as it often did; then came one of those little faint give-away taps. That settled it; now or never. She switched on the bedside light; it was heavily shaded and threw darkness rather than light into the distances of the huge room; but it served. Dressing-gown? No time; but my pyjamas are perfectly decent . . . She leapt from her bed, her thoughts racing . . . If it’s Pringle? Well, if it’s Pringle, it’s my duty as Portia’s secretary to see what he’s up to. And if it isn’t Pringle? Well, come on! With scarcely a sound she whipped open her door.

The passage was inkily dark; the glow from her bedroom penetrated it hardly at all. But her moment had been well-timed; in the gloom almost opposite, something sprang back and away from her into deeper darkness with a little squeaking gasp like a bat’s cry. And then from the shadows a voice said, “Oh, darling, you did give me a fright!”

Sylvia found her lips dry, her tongue mutinous; but they contrived to say, “Quashy!”

“Yes, darling, Quashy. What’s it all about?”

Sylvia felt herself shaking from head to foot—nerves rage, reaction.

“What’s it all about? You ask me that! And it’s been you all the time. Night after night after night. . . .”

Quashy’s figure emerged dimly into the radiance from the doorway.

“My pet, you’re frightened.” And indeed Sylvia’s voice had risen a tone or two. “Listen, darling, we can’t have a scene out here. Let’s go into your room.” Completely self-possessed, she pushed Sylvia in front of her through the doorway; she shut the door gently. “Jump into your bed again, honey. I haven’t got a great deal on but I’ve more than you. What sishy ’jamas!”

Sylvia sat down on the edge of her bed, staring. Quashy appeared to be fully dressed; at least she had on shoes, stockings and a yellow linen frock. Her hair was undisturbed, her make-up smooth and recent. Sylvia could only gasp out:

“So it was you all the time!”

“I suppose so, angel. Oh, don’t look at me like that! I’m so terribly terribly sorry for frightening you . . .”

Sylvia reached for the remnants of her dignity. “You didn’t frighten me . . . I haven’t been sleeping well.”

“Well, disturbed you, then. And you not sleeping well, you poor sweet. But honestly, I never thought you’d hear. Cross my heart and cut my throat, I thought I wasn’t making a sound.”

“You didn’t make many. . . But why—what on earth—what have you been doing?—”

A little pause.

“Darling, I go for walks.”

“Walks?”

“Yes, walks. Ta-ta, promenade, Spazierengehen.”

“But—in the middle of the night?”

“Why not? It’s the nicest time. Only, of course, people wouldn’t understand that, so I have to sneak in by the passage window. I get up the scullery roof. It’s easy. You must try it some time, darling. Fun. Nice.”

But she’s babbling a little, Sylvia thought, and her eyes keep narrowing; all at once, her reason returned. “Walks.” “Nice.” “Nice walks.” “There are some nice walks round here.” Now, who said that? . . . Ah!

“Quashy, you don’t mean to tell me you go wandering about in the middle of the night all by yourself?”

“But of course, sweetness!” And the eyes—they were really rather nice eyes when you came to look at them—opening wide and round and innocent. “Who else would there be?”

“Quashy, it’s not—it’s not—Robin Galletly?”

There was a profound silence; the innocent eyes altered, they narrowed again, the little mouth tightened like a closing sea-anemone. Into Quashy’s face came its habitual expression of hard sulky discontent.

“Darling, aren’t you being rather a pest?”

“I’m asking you a question; you don’t need to answer.”

There was another silence; Quashy’s slim fingers picked at her linen frock; she eyed Sylvia as a child eyes the headmistress. She said at last,

“Well—and if it was Robin Galletly?”

Nerves, sleeplessness, the reaction from violent resolve all threw Sylvia off her guard. She said—without meaning to say it in the least—

“But, Quashy, you mustn’t. It’s—it’s baby-snatching.”

She regretted it the moment it was said; but it was too late. For on the last word, Quashy burst suddenly into white flame. Rarely in her life had Sylvia seen such fury. Switching with instant dreadfulness from child to virago, Quashy leapt towards her, breathing hard hissing like a serpent.

“How dare you say that to me! How dare you. You—you horrible-minded school-teacher!” She gave Sylvia a violent push in the chest that sent her sprawling. “You nit-witted old virgin, get back into your horrible bed and I hope you don’t sleep in it—not ever again. Never, never, never!” Like a flash of white flame she was gone; the door closed noiselessly behind her; the familiar Noises—unguardedly a little louder than usual—passed away and were gone.

Sylvia sat upright on her bed again, her head between her hands. So now we know, now we know. And now I have done it . . . “Nit-witted old virgin!” Good heaven and earth, what a thing to be called . . . And by Quashy!

*  *  *

At six, just when Sylvia, having slept no more, was thinking that a bath—yes, and a “nice walk”—might now require no explanation, there came a tapping at her door. It opened to admit Quashy. She was wearing a Chinese dressing-gown over blue silk pyjamas and she was industriously polishing her blood-red finger-nails with a cloth buffer. She eyed Sylvia with a speculative apprehension that might in other circumstances have been comic.

“Darling; about last night—”

Sylvia, brushing out her hair at her dressing-table in the full and merciless light of that vast square window, saw from her reflection that she was in no fettle for discussion. And the rings under my eyes! . . . She said wearily, “Well?”

“Better forget it, hadn’t we? Call it a w.o.—wash-out. Misdeal. You know.”

Sylvia hesitated. I was insulting; I meddled; needlessly.

“I don’t see what else we can do if I’m to stay on here.”

Quashy dropped her buffer and let it lie.

“But, precious, of course you must stay on here. Why, we all love you!”

Sylvia brushed on in silence . . . If she’s trying to be conciliatory, she’s overdoing it . . . Yet the creature sounded astonishingly genuine.

“You didn’t seem to love me very much last night.”

“I know—oh, I know!” Quashy picked up her buffer again. “But, sweetness, weren’t you being rather a beast to me? I—I can’t help it about Robin.”

No. Could you “help it” about Basil? And because your chance of happiness has disappeared, must you therefore be sour and spinsterish and dog-in-the-manger to this poor excited little 1938? “Nit-witted old virgin”; there was a sort of basis of truth about that extraordinary accusation, just as there was a basis—oh, yes there was—of the disappointed old maid in your attitude to poor Quashy. So—

“Yes. Perhaps I was. But you got me at rather a bad moment. And—I don’t think he’s grown-up.”

“Of course he isn’t, the sweetie-pie! I wouldn’t like him if he was.”

“In any case it was no business of mine. I had no earthly right to say it to you at all. I ought to apologise.”

Quashy’s reply was startling; she flung her arms round Sylvia’s neck. And to Sylvia’s astonishment there was something wonderfully pleasant about this embrace; there was a warm girlish softness about Quashy under the Chinese dressing-gown that was absurdly comforting,

“Darling, darling, darling! Of course it was your business. Isn’t it everybody’s business to be kind and to try to help? Love ye one another and all that.”

“But I wasn’t trying to help. I was simply expressing my thoughts aloud and that’s not only not everybody’s business but a thing everybody ought to avoid.”

Quashy said vaguely, “You pet!” and disentangled herself slowly. There was a little silence which Sylvia broke.

“Of course I wasn’t going to tell anyone—”

“My lamb! Don’t tell me that. Of course you weren’t. I knew that all along.” (Oh, you did, did you?) “That wouldn’t be you . . . You see, it’s only that I like so terribly going out for these walks at night, but of course you couldn’t expect them to understand that. And I’m terribly terribly sorry I disturbed you. But I won’t again, I swear. I’ll be an absolute mouse.”

“Oh, I won’t worry any more about the noises; not now I know what they are . . . But seriously, Quashy, do be careful. I mean, Pringle might see you scrambling up that roof—”

In the mirror she suddenly intercepted the look on Quashy’s face; it was a most extraordinary look; indescribable; she couldn’t interpret it at all.

“Yes, of course, he might. But I think he sleeps pretty sound. But I will be careful, darling. Careful as careful . . . Sylvia, you know, you really are rather sweet.”

There was another difficult little silence; this time Quashy ended it by turning away to the door. But she hung there irresolute.

“I am sorry, petness.”

“It doesn’t matter, Quashy.”

“I suppose—I suppose you wouldn’t like a Cachet Printemps? I’ve got some.”

Sylvia was touched, despite herself. “No thanks, really.”

“No? Well . . . well then, darling, we’re agreed. It just didn’t happen. Far the best way to deal with horrid things. Just un-happen them.”

She drifted out, leaving Sylvia thinking, Will she one day un-happen the wretched Robin? Let’s hope so . . . But of course you can’t “un-happen” things really; we can’t really “un-happen” last night—and it’s just one more nail in my coffin at Humbug Hall. A few more, a very few more, like that and I shall have to go—whether I want to or not . . . Got to happen; let’s face it.

*  *  *

But at breakfast all thought of Quashy and her midnight dalliances was driven out of mind. For at breakfast there was a letter from Cousin Lettuce, a disturbing letter, a most worrying and alarming letter.

“Dearest Sylvia, I think I ought to let you know that a young man came here yesterday. He said his name was Caldecott and that he had met me at one of your poor father’s parties and I did seem to remember him though as far as I remember he didn’t take much notice of me. Well, after beating about the bush for a while and saying how pleased he was to have found me—as if he couldn’t have found me any time if he’d just tried—he asked me in a very casual way if I happened to know your address. I said I didn’t and then he forgot to be casual and said I must. I said really I didn’t and I thought you had gone abroad in connection with some newspaper. It was the first thing that came into my head and I hope it was all right. Well, then, he got very flustered and asked if I knew anybody else who would know it—the address I mean; and I said as firmly as I could that if I didn’t know it nobody would. He seemed to believe that, so he asked me if I ever heard from you to let him know straight away—“send a telegram,” he said, and gave me his address. Bridstead School, Sussex. After that we had tea and he talked about his school and about your father and you and then at last he went away.

“Of course, my dear, you know your own business best but he seemed really a very nice young man and most interested in you and most anxious to help you in any way he could. And quite harmless. Now that you haven’t so many friends, perhaps you would like to get into touch with him. But of course you’ll know best about that. Always your, Lettuce.”

Yes, indeed! Yes, I’ll know best about that. Oh, Lettuce, Lettuce, you really are an ass! “Nit-witted old virgin,” eh? I’m not the only one.

And how dare you call my Basil “harmless”! He isn’t harmless—he never was. Far, far, from it. In fact, here’s another nail into my coffin already. For if he found you so quickly, how long will it be till he finds me? The Bank won’t tell him; I can trust old Caddy; but after all, if the worst comes to the worst, he’s only got to go to the Police. He could tell them any old story . . .

When the Police become enemies instead of friends, what does the wise person do? Skips the country. And that’s what I’ll have to do. Go and live with some Continental family in some quite unheard-of region—like Haute Vienne or Gelderland or Mecklenburg-Schwerin. “Board in exchange for English conversation.” Ugh! But that’s what it’ll come to. I needn’t have bothered about liking or disliking Humbug Hall; it’s not going to last. It was much too easy.

But—“harmless,” indeed! “Nit-witted old virgin”; there are times when I like that phrase . . .

*  *  *

It seemed as if the Celestial carpenter, taking a fresh packet and a new and efficient hammer, set out once and for all to finish off the job of those nails. For it was on the Sunday after this—only three days later—that Pelham Tweed, the Man Who Was, drove in the last one. Well and truly he drove it in.

The Sunday—which was gloriously fine with a hint of freshness at last in the thunder-cleared air—found Sylvia in a generally chastened mood . . . Perhaps I was a beast to Quashy, perhaps I was also unfair to Robin. He looks such a sweet infant; but these little creatures nowadays who seem almost imbecile with innocence often prove astonishingly knowledgeable underneath. When Quashy said “old” virgin, it was true in a sense—I don’t know my own generation. I’m only twenty-five, but I’ve lived among my elders and among rather exciting elders at that; I don’t know these young things; even Basil—I often felt ten years his senior. (But I would never, never have called him “harmless” oh, no—a most insulting word!) . . . I daresay, too, I might have been more sympathetic with Rule; the poor boy’s stiff with complexes and phobias—I might have tried to untie some of the knots . . . And I’ve been quite ridiculous about the Concord Crusade; I’ve sneered to myself at Portia and picked on all her little weaknesses instead of concentrating on the greatness of her idea, the fine broad scheme she’s trying to carry out . . . Have I no finer feelings at all?

Pelham, too, as it happened, was in one of his more attractive phases. The heat-wave had given him just that weary washed-out languor which suited his beautiful little face—ordinarily much too beautiful—and his elegant—normally rather puny—little body. He was drained of vitality, he developed a consumptive pallor that set off most lusciously his russet beard and hair; tiny freckles began to decorate his cheeks and forehead. One could not but feel for him in the intolerable penance—imposed on him by Portia’s selfishness—of those long daily drives to office and back, battling with traffic in the blinding heat or on slithery rain-slimed roads. He told Sylvia he was not sleeping well; and with that at any rate, thought Sylvia, I should be able to sympathise. Altogether, as an object of kindly interest, the Bearded Lady was in the ascendant.

As if he perceived and assessed these sentiments—as indeed perhaps he did—Pelham offered an opportunity for their practical application. On the Sunday afternoon—tired and beautiful in a brown linen suit and an expansive maroon tie—he said to Sylvia, “Wouldn’t you like a breath of air?”

Sylvia said quite truthfully that she would.

“Then let’s have one. There is some air to-day . . . We’ll go out in my car . . . Have you been to Ashridge Common? No? Then we’ll go there. It’s a lovely place; it’s not really very far.”

In Pelham’s regal car they drove very pleasantly to Ashridge Common, which was indeed lovely enough—though exceptionally crowded; a solid phalanx of cars was parked all along the road-edges. Pelham explained that you weren’t allowed to take your car more than fifteen yards from the road; he made a whimsical reference to Mrs. Grundy. Sylvia said, then perhaps they could walk a bit. “It wouldn’t be very nice just here.”

But Pelham knew a trick worth two of that; he turned the car down a side road through a forest of beeches—that entrancing combination of green leaves, silver trunks and bare, fairy-swept ground underneath. He ran the car backwards into a sort of little quarry—very private indeed. Sylvia had a sudden—and warning?—recollection of young men earnestly steering one to a sitting-out place at a dance. Pelham said, “And so here we are.”

Here we were; and just for an instant Sylvia wondered, “Why?” But it was too soothing in the beech-forest to bother about questions; she took off her hat and laid her head back comfortably on the car cushions. She said drowsily, “It is pleasant here.”

Pelham lit a cigarette. “Yes. I often come here. It’s always quiet; one can be alone. Demos is a herd-god, a deity of sheep. He doesn’t explore. Fortunately—for people like us.”

“Demos likes Demos. He wouldn’t like this. Too quiet.” And indeed it was almost frighteningly quiet.

“He has no mind, you see—only a newsreel. This requires a mind. . . .

“’England, my England, I do see
> Thy beauty in this summer tree;
> England, I love thee—love thou me.’”

“Who wrote that?”

“Well—I did. Here. And it has at least the merit of being true. I am a patriot, Sylvia—that is to say, a lover—that is to say, a fool.”

That is to say, thought Sylvia unkindly, what you have said a hundred times before; it came off a little too glibly. If you mean it, you’re the first Government servant I ever met who called himself a patriot.

He gave her a little elfish sideways look. “I don’t know if you’ve read any of my little verses?”

Sylvia said hastily, “Oh, yes!” and hoped he would not ask for criticism; for the truth was she had read not a line of them. Yet it was unlikely that he would ask for criticism; from the lapping-up look on his face, praise should suffice.

“I have composed several of them in this very spot. It has given me a kind of happiness. A semblance.”

Sylvia, desiring sleep not talk, said with complete idiocy that it must be lovely to be able to write poetry.

“Ah, poetry—yes. But my trifles, my little delicatessen, are not poetry. For poetry you want life. And my little ephemerae are dead.”

The word “dead” brought Sylvia back to realities with a jerk; it was the word she had been dreading all the afternoon. But she could only say, again idiotically, that she was sure they were not.

“You are kind, too kind. But dead and lifeless they are. You see, Sylvie, the spring is broken.”

Sylvia stirred uneasily. Quite apart from the fact that ‘Sylvie’ was Basil’s word, she didn’t want to be called ‘Sylvie’ by Pelham. It was so obviously an advance, a deliberate advance, a—a feeler. She thought of saying, “Do you mind not calling me ‘Sylvie’”—and perhaps explaining to him just why; he of all people ought to understand. But it was too hot, too difficult, she was too comfortable. If only he’d shut up; if only he’d sit still! But he wouldn’t do either. He said again, curse him, “The spring is broken”. . . One would have to do something about it.

“Don’t you think”—Sylvia lashed herself to an unwilling east-wind briskness—“Don’t you think it’s rather cowardly to talk like that? I mean, you’ve such lots of things; you have your work, you have your poetry, you have your family.” (Oh dear, I’m afraid I’ve put these in the wrong order; never mind—too late now.) “Just because once, long ago—”

“Ah, but that Once! . . . You wrong me, you know; I’m not cowardly; I merely state facts. God knows I don’t wish to be like this—a worn-out relic. But—! I have, as you say, my work, my family, my verse; I value all these things, but I assess them in their true value in the light of—that other. And that light destroys them. As Semele saw and was destroyed by the golden light of Zeus.”

“Oh, but—”

“It destroys them. I have, as you say, my masters and my responsibilities and my tasks. I try—ah, Sylvie, I try . . .”

“I’m sure—”

“I serve—ah, yes, I serve; for that is a thing the Dead can do.” He sat forward; another quotation coming? No . . . “I donate the relic of myself to England—to this green, merry-hearted, rough-and-tumble England—”

Sylvia thought, Does he? Am I wronging him? If only it sounded a little less like a recitation . . . She bit back a yawn.

“I serve, Sylvia, I give myself. I can say Ich Dien. Ah! but only Ich Dien. I cannot say—as can the happy quick—Ich Liebe. It isn’t cowardice to realise that; rather it would be cowardice to pretend otherwise . . . As I have so often told you, you mustn’t expect too much of the Dead . . . Sylvie—”

Sylvia opened her lips to reply—perhaps crossly, perhaps wearily, certainly unwillingly. What to say to him?. . . And in that unguarded moment, quite suddenly, on that last ‘Sylvie,’ he leant across her and closed her opening lips with his own. Closed them firmly, finally, for perhaps ten seconds. Then he sat back again.

It was quite unspeakable. It would have been bad and bad enough to be surprise-kissed in a car on Ashridge Common by any man old enough to be one’s father. Or by any man at all, for that matter. To have been so completely beguiled, so taken by surprise that a nondescript stranger had enjoyed one’s lips as hardly even Basil had done—all that would have been bad and bad enough. But about the Bearded Lady’s kiss there had been something utterly repellent. The feel of that silky little beard had been so sickening that it had almost made one shriek; and his lips had been softly prehensile like—-like plasticine; and over that nasty net of russet silk, close, close, close, there had looked into Sylvia’s the eyes of some mean and thieving creature. This man, they said, is a liar and a cheat and a sham; he serves nobody but himself, he never loved anybody at all; far from being dead, he is maliciously alive . . . Horrible!

In one instant it slaughtered Pelham, patriot and lover and object of sympathy; he became a common beastly little man of whom one could believe anything . . . Sylvia said, gasping, “I’m not going to make a scene with you. . . . You must know that was a mean thing to do . . . Now will you take me back.”

“Sylvie!”

“No!”

“Sylvie, don’t be hard; don’t make yourself hard. You, with those wide eyes and that generous mouth. Lovely child, don’t harden yourself . . . Compassion, beautiful thing—”

“I said I wouldn’t make a scene with you. Must I? Will you start the car, please.”

“Ah, no. Why should I?”

“Because if you don’t, I shall get out and walk.”

“But why, why? Sylvie—”

She struggled up briskly and opened the door.

“I’m going.”

“Oh, no. Don’t.”

“Yes, I will. For the last time, will you start the car and take me home.”

He shook his head, peering intently into her face.

“I don’t want to go home yet. Stay a little.”

Sylvia got out of the car. It was almost incredible, it was altogether incredible, but he meant it. He meant to let her walk. A sudden sense of comedy burst through her rage; ordinarily you said, “Take me home at once,” and it was understood that the man promptly and apologetically obeyed. But if he didn’t? Well, then, in these unbelievable circumstances, you walked away and left him sitting. And did you look a fool or didn’t you? All wrong; not fair.

But the Man Who Was quite evidently meant it. Without further speech, Sylvia turned her back on him and strode away with as much dignity as she could muster. Needless to say, she almost immediately tripped over a root and nearly fell. Oh damn! Oh damn! Oh damn! . . . And I’ve left my hat in the car; oh, curse! . . . Pelham sat where he was, staring after her, perhaps smiling. The little toad! . . . At last the main road again.

A picnic party sprawling on the turf; hot and ugly and tousled but at any rate human. “Could you tell me please where I could get a bus?” They couldn’t. Another party—shrieking girls in pink and yellow frocks playing rounders; “Could you tell me, please—” They couldn’t either. They stopped their game to stare with ovine curiosity. Gape, gape. Do I look odd, then? No hat? Flushed? Oh, damn! . . . At last two men in a sort of uniform; keepers.

“Could you tell me, please, where I could get a bus?”

“Depends where you want to go, Miss.”

“Brixter. Hambling. Elding.” They had never heard of any of them; imbecile moments trying to explain; all his fault, the little reptile! “Oh,well—St. Albans or Hertford.”

“You’ll get a 352 anywhere along ’ere for Northchurch. You could ask there. Maybe you’d get a Green Line.”

Sylvia thanked them and walked at random towards Northchurch. You could get a 352—if there ever were any. She was so nearly at Northchurch before one caught her up that it wasn’t worth while getting into it; in a trance of fury she continued on foot. At Northchurch nobody knew anything; she trudged on, stupefied with rage, into Berkhampstead. There at last she managed to hire a car; grudgingly and exorbitantly they undertook to drive her to Hambling. . . . Oh damn, oh damn; oh hell, oh hell; oh curse!

She was nearly at Brixter before common sense came back; it came with a sudden vision of Pringle in his white jacket saying, “Don’t go into the garden too much with the Bearded Lady.” At all the monstrous oddity that now enveloped these words Sylvia burst out laughing at last. Thank goodness, I see it straight now; it was comic really. But—how did Pringle know? My predecessors? Probably. It doesn’t matter.

But—Pelham! With his Perfections and his Poems and his Patriotisms. Ich Dien! The—the philanderer! The common adulterous little sham!

Well, anyway, Pelham’s finished it. The last nail’s into the coffin now. Here endeth the First Lesson; here endeth Humbug Hall. Well—it was coming anyway. I’ll tell Portia tomorrow morning that I must go at once; I’ll tell her some lie—anything. I wish I could do it tonight.

I’ll stop this car now and pay it off and walk. And won’t I be glad to get a wash! Perhaps then I’ll get the feel of him off my face.

XI

But in the morning Sylvia did a thing she very rarely did—an accountable thing in some ways, an extraordinary thing in others. She slept in.

In point of fact, she had enjoyed her best night’s sleep at Humbug Hall. She had gone to bed early—after her usual light supper in her room—and had fallen asleep almost at once and then had gone on sleeping. She slept and slept and slept. True, the Noises occurred again somewhere about half past one—very, very quiet and careful this time; but now that one knew they were only Quashy returning from some nocturnal rambling with or without her Robin, they had no power to disturb. So Sylvia slept soundly into the morning and woke to find some very cold tea on her bedside table and the hands of her little travelling clock pointing to half past nine.

She leapt up in dismay and dressed herself in a fury, dragging on any clothes anyhow. Was this the way to begin a day of stern resolution, of difficult upheavals, of sunderings and endings that would require all one’s tact and diplomacy? Whether or not, however, it was done now; and it was little surprise to Sylvia to find no breakfast left in the dining-room and only Pringle going about with a duster and a somewhat enigmatic expression.

“Where’s Mrs. Tweed?”

Pringle cocked an eye at the sharpness of her tone.

“Went up to Town an hour ago—allee same like Master.”

“Went up to Town?”

Her dismay seemed to amuse Pringle. He said, “Oh she’ll be back for lunch . . . So you didn’t take the gypsy’s warning?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do. Didn’t I tell you to keep away from the Bearded Lady?”

To her infinite annoyance Sylvia felt herself colouring. But he couldn’t know anything; he could only be guessing—if even that.

“I haven’t an idea what you’re talking about.”

“One of the six common statements,” said Pringle, “which are never true . . . No, Sylvia, when people go out in twos and come home in ones, it’s either murder or a first-class row.”

Sylvia bit her lip. “Don’t you think you see too much? Don’t you think you see more than there is?”

“(A)—Yes. (B)—No. It’d take a lot to see more than there is in this house.”

“Mr. Tweed”—nothing like boldness—“must have come in at much the same time as I did.”

“He didn’t, though. Dined in the country, he did. And now he’s gone up to stay at his Club in Town for a few nights. Finds the journey trying in the heat, bless his heart . . . I know; we’ve had it before.”

“Had what before?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing. . . . And when do you go?”

“What makes you think I’m going?”

“The same process of deductive reasoning, Watson, as has led me to my other conclusions.”

“Well, in this case you’re right. I probably shall be going. And soon.”

“I thought so.” Pringle sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re a human sort of creature. There’s a man-to-man sort of decency about you—”

“Because I’ve listened to all your silly lies—”

Pringle suddenly picked up his duster. When he spoke it was in quite a new voice—a much better voice.

“They weren’t all lies, Miss Savage.” (And that, thought Sylvia amazed, is the first and only time he’s ever called me anything but ‘Sylvia’.) “And here’s something that’s no lie unless my name’s Ribbentrop, and that is that you’ll be hearing more of Humbug Hall before you’re done. You may think you’re through with it, but you’re not.”

“I am through with it. Or I very soon will be.”

“O-oh, no! Now, take the gypsy’s warning this time . . .”

He went off duster in hand—with the last word again.

Checkmated in her purpose of direct action—at least till after lunch—Sylvia went to look for her letters. There was only one—from the Bank. She ripped it open and stood staring at it as if she could not believe her eyes.

“Madam,” said Hers Faithfully George Cadman, “In accordance with your instructions we have today sold your holding of 2000 Alnakers Limited Ordinary Shares at seven shillings and sixpence, and enclose the relevant Contract Note. We await your further instructions as to the disposal of the sum thus realised.”

Sylvia put down the letter and steadied herself against the mantelpiece. I am living in some sort of dream. I have become part of a story, of a farcical play by some jesting god. I am in some fairyland where only the incredible happens; people change into other people; there are magics and miracles. It can’t be true. But there was the Contract Note, a small sheet of paper of a peculiar vivid green. “Sold by Order of the Fenchurch and Moorgate Bank Ltd. 2000 Alnakers Ltd. 4/-.Ordinary Shares Fully Paid @ 7/6—£750. Commission, £7.10. Contract Stamp 2/-. Nett total, £742 8/-. Settlement Leach and Tozer. Subject to the Rules and Regulations of the London Stock Exchange, Snell, Gibson and Pike Members of the Stock Exchange, London.” You couldn’t get beyond that.

Well! I seem to have made over three hundred and forty pounds. In less than a month. It’s magic; it’s miracles. Oh, clever Axey!

*  *  *

There seemed to be a conspiracy of the universe that morning to defeat and delay Sylvia, to thwart the progress of her resolution, to drive her mind into other channels. First Pringle, being mysterious and queer; then the Bank’s letter; now Rule. She had imagined Rule to be out in company with all the rest of the family; on the contrary’ he pursued and caught her in the drawing-room whither she had retired to gloat over the marvellousness of Axey.

“I say, Sylvia—”

Sylvia looked up wearily. A glance, however, assured her that Rule at least was completely unaware of any disaster in the air; he was innocently thinking—as usual—of himself.

“Yes, Rule?”

“I’ve been looking for a chance to talk to you. I’m starting, you know, tomorrow.”

“Starting, Rule? Where?”

“Tangier, of course. I told you. At least once.”

“Oh, yes . . . Yes; of course . . . Lucky you.”

“It should be a very interesting experience. Spiritually, I mean, quite apart from the travel and scenery values. After all, the East is the cradle of all religions, you know—ours as well as the others.”

Sylvia stared at him; my life is cracking; he comes blethering about cradles of religions. And can you call Tangier “the East”? Oh, well—let that go . . . “You ought to have a splendid time.”

“Oh—splendid time?” He was vaguely offended. “It isn’t just for that I’m going. That’s not my outlook on the thing at all.”

“Well, you wouldn’t want me to wish you a rotten time, would you?”

“So long as I learned from it. I wouldn’t mind. And I shall learn from this journey. I almost must.”

Sylvia said with bright inanity that travelling always—.

“Yes. . .. I think it will be most interesting to compare these other religions with our own. You know I’m a Christian, Sylvia?”

I ought to by now if I don’t.

“Well, of course, I always shall be. But I’ve felt for a long time that there’s something lacking in Christianity. The Church isn’t doing its bit, it isn’t pulling its weight, it isn’t helping people at all. People want a frightful lot of help these days; they’re all just dying to be led back to some sort of spiritual life, some sort of belief—”

That, thought Sylvia, is uncommonly sensible and true. She said again, less absently, “Yes, Rule?”

“We want a leader.”

“We do indeed.”

“I’ve been wondering—I’ve been wondering if I . . . I’d like to start a new movement—I’d call it just that, the New Movement. It’d be a sort of Order “

“Like monks?”

“Yes and no. Not so stand-offish. But no money and all that. Get right down and rough it. Live in contact with the worst we can find. Like I did with that ice-cream tricycle. Start fresh. Just as if we were the original disciples.”

“They didn’t make a very good job of it.”

“No. Perhaps not. But we could learn by their mistakes. You see the idea anyway. What do you think of it?”

Sylvia wondered what to say. Life, she thought, is very very difficult; at a moment when I am desperately concerned for my own immediate future I am caught up in the consideration of Rule’s New Movement: And because Rule has paid me the compliment of consulting me—and it’s a very big compliment—I must seriously consider it. She said at last, “I’m not very fond of Movements. Especially New Movements. They sound a bit like Hitler.”

“Oh, no! We should be absolutely against all that. And war, of course. The New Movement would be absolutely and finally against war. Absolutely.”

“And suppose there is a war? In spite of you.”

“Then we don’t fight.”

“I see . . . Rule, will you answer me a question?”

“Of course. I want to answer questions.”

“Well, look here. How much of your New Movement—oh, and not only it but hundreds of other movements and impulses and societies that young people are going in for today—how much of them all do you think is due simply to a terror that war is going to come, do what you all like, and a hunt for some sort of dug-out—call it the New Movement or anything else—to give you a colourable pretext for keeping out of it?” That’ll make him think.

“Sylvia!” But he did think for a moment; then he drew himself up stiffly. “I can answer your question very easily. So far as my New Movement is concerned, it’s absolute rot.”

“All right, then—go ahead.”

He looked at her sombrely. “I can’t go quite so fast as all that. I detest hurrying. I shall have to think it over. That’s why I’m going to Tangier. To compare things.”

“How long are you going for?”

“About a month.”

“Well, you certainly ought to be able to get it straight in that time.” (And how you’ll enjoy it!)

“Yes.” . . . But he became inexplicably embarrassed. “I thought I’d tell you . . . I—I wish you could come with me.”

Sylvia, genuinely startled, took refuge in jest. “Me, Rule? Wouldn’t it be a little improper?”

“Oh, tschah! Don’t be sickening. I can’t stand flippancy. I’d have liked to see your reactions, that’s all. You’ve got a great deal of sense. I—I value your opinion, rather.”

Sylvia thought, Wonders will never cease; Rule is valuing me; this is Humbug Hall’s most marvellous somersault yet. She looked up in amaze to see that his face had turned quite red: is it possible that he—is it possible that Rule is beginning to like me? Is this his way of making love? She said gently, “You can tell me about it when you come back.” When you come back! And where, my poor Rule, will I be then?

He said eagerly, “Yes, yes, of course. It will be most interesting. I really think you would be helpful.”

“I’ll try my best, Rule.” And now that we’ve got that off our chests, perhaps he’ll go away. But he lingered. Sylvia sat in hopeful silence, but even this must have been over-encouraging. For Rule threw himself comfortably back on the sofa, pulled down his coat and began to address a meeting of the New Movement.

“You know how I feel about Christianity, Sylvia . . . Christianity is a simple, primitive, bed-rock confession of faith that’s been messed up and muddled about—”

He talked solidly for an hour. At times Sylvia caught familiar phrases—“all this confusion about Trinities” . . . “I can’t stand allegories” . . . “that blah-blah old imbecile Galletly” . . . But for the most part her mind wandered. My war is coming—coming after lunch; I shan’t have any New Movement to retreat into . . . Oh dear! life is indeed strange; not thus, not thus did I contemplate spending this forenoon! . . . Yes, Rule? . . .

*  *  *

Portia was late for lunch, but Axey arrived punctiliously on time; indeed it was his appearance that rid Sylvia finally of Rule. Sic me servavit Apollo; with warm relief Sylvia turned to the glossy practicality of Axey with his beautiful clothes and his smoothly-groomed grey hair and his long face darkly alert—Axey, that immaculate magician who waved wands and drew fortunes tumbling from the sky. She saw that Pringle had provided him with a glass of Humbug Hall’s excellent sherry at which he was sipping abstractedly—as Merlin no doubt sipped his equivalent restorative in moments of relaxation.

“Axey! How did you do it?”

He smiled—so pleasantly.

“Do what, my dear?”

“My money, of course.”

“Ah, that! Then it was all right?”

“Indeed, indeed, it was all right. Axey, it was like magic.”

He set down his glass with care. “Ah, well, there is such a thing as magic. Perhaps after all I am a magician.” He laughed happily. Sylvia said,

“Well, now magic something nice for yourself, Axey; you deserve it. I am grateful.” She drew the Bank’s letter from her bag and showed it to him; he read it with as much care as if it had been a matter of millions.

“You see, Axey, they want my further instructions. What am I to tell them?”

“Ah, now you must ask the good Manager.”

“And if he says—War Loan?”

“Then—War Loan.”

“No more magic, Axey?”

“No more magic, Sylvia . . . This is not a time for magic.” His face suddenly closed like a door and became completely dark. “It is black magic that is in the air today.”

It was chilling. “War?”

“If there is not a war, there will be worse—for my people.” But his smile came back. “But you cannot kill us, Sylvia, you cannot destroy the Jews. We shall always be going on. The State cannot exist without us. That is our magic, Sylvia . . .”

*  *  *

Portia arrived at last, sweeping into the placid Sylvia-and-Axey atmosphere like a liner taking the launching-basin or a bright new ploughshare cleaving the patient soil. Lunch was rather a scurry and conversation devoted to a recital of the annoyances and stupidities that had disintegrated Portia’s morning. (She did not mention Pelham as one of them.) Axey was reduced to an occasional “So-oh, dear lady?” and Sylvia to a complete silence in which she was sporadically conscious of Pringle’s eyes on the back of her neck. Rule sat pensive, immersed no doubt in joint contemplation of Tangier and the New Movement; Quashy was absent. As a last-meal-at-Humbug-Hall, thought Sylvia, it might have been much much worse.

It ended in a gulping of too-hot coffee, a dismissal of Axey and a curt—curter than usual—word of command from Portia. “Come along, Sylvia; we shall have to make up for lost time, shan’t we.” And now at last thought Sylvia, the hour of battle is upon me . . . If she asks me, “Why?” what shall I say?

Following Portia into her “work-room,” Sylvia felt her mouth going dry. How did housemaids comport themselves in a like situation? “Please’m, I can’t stay.” “Indeed, Elsie, and why not?” “Please’m, the master’s been molestin’ of me.” . . . I wish—oh, how I wish—I could take grave things gravely. Yet I’m glad I feel a little frightened; it shows that I respect Portia, it shows that she was someone worth working for. What a life she must have had of it with the Bearded Lady; first the Perfection at Port Cros and then—how many others? Why on earth does she stick to him? Why do half the wives that I know stick to their husbands? Or vice versa? Habit; the fear of scandal; or some queer kind of residuum of what must have been a blinding love? . . . Well, now . . .

The “workroom” was a charming place; its furnishings, decor and equipment must have cost a small fortune. Once more, where did it all come from? I don’t know; but anyway I shall be sorry to leave it. This afternoon, of course, it must needs look specially attractive with the sun streaming in at the end window and the green paddock outside and the elms waving beyond. Even the work, even the Concord Crusade, took on a new appeal; I’ve been really interested; in some queer way I’ve been happy here, in this room. And poor Portia, poor cold dignified steel-and-silver Portia; someone ought to stand by her. I ought to. But I’m going to rat—and right now, this moment. Now for it!

“Mrs. Tweed, I’m sorry to have to say—”

The words trembled on Sylvia’s lips. But they were never uttered; for turning suddenly with a clash and jingle of ornaments, Portia said in her steel-bright brittle voice, “Sylvia, how long will it take you to pack?”

Good God! thought Sylvia, it is coming the other way round? Aloud she could only say stupidly, “Pack?”

“Yes. Could you be ready to start for the Continent on Wednesday?”

The room reeled, the beam of sunlight blazed for a moment to incandescence, all the apparatus on the writing-table jumped up and down like the animals in a Disney picture.

“The Continent?”

“Yes . . . Dear me, Sylvia, surely I speak plain English. You must have read the papers. You must know that Hitler is speaking in Nuremberg tonight. You must have read about the Sudeten developments—”

Guiltily Sylvia thought, I didn’t—not very closely. Well, I’ve had my own worries, haven’t I? She muttered something idiotic; “It looks pretty bad.”

“It looks critical. So critical that I think we must try to do something.”

Sylvia stared. We? What could we do? Portia said, interpreting her stare, “I think the peace of the world is in danger. The worst danger since nineteen-fourteen. We, of all people, can’t just stand by and see it.”

“But—but can we—?”

“We can at least try, and I intend to. We have our organisation. In Rome, in Vienna, in Prague. We have our correspondents there. They must be able to do something. It mayn’t be much; they must do at least all they can.” She began to stalk tigerishly up and down the room; her voice rose to platform pitch . . . Correspondents . . . Signor Umbertoli at Rome, Mr. Judson at Vienna . . . Concord Crusade . . . every little helps . those who can do anything, even the least, must do it . . . we must do it. . . opportunity . . . obligation . . . “And you know as well as I do what our correspondents will do if left to themselves. Nothing.”

Sylvia was staring at the carpet. Rome, Vienna Prague; that would be talking. That would be a get-away.

“I should start with Rome, Sylvia. I’m most dissatisfied with Signor Umbertoli there. He’s lazy; I doubt if he’s even truthful. Then Vienna. They all want a shaking up. Quite apart from the present emergency—”

Rome, Prague, Vienna. The complete get-away . . . Basil would never find me . . . I needn’t ever come back . . . And—Rome? We might see my-son-Conerat. . . Sylvia said, more stupidly than ever, “You—-you want me to come too?”

Portia’s foot began tapping again. “I’m saying so, aren’t I? And at once. Wednesday. Just as soon as I can get the visas.” She gave Sylvia a sudden hard look. “Of course there may be danger. If it comes to war, we may have difficulties. I ought to warn you—”

War? What did war matter? Rome, Vienna, Prague, the complete get-away. A trail no Basil could possibly follow . . . Why, this solves everything—Basil, the Bearded Lady, Humbug Hall, the future . . .

“I wouldn’t think of that. If you can go, I can. Of course I can quite easily be ready by Wednesday.”

Portia’s sigh of relief welcomed this return to sanity and comprehension.

“Then, my dear, get ready . . . And meantime we mustn’t stand here trifling. There’s a hundred and one things to be done—in this room, on this table . . .”

But Sylvia was thinking, Humbug Hall; Wednesday; two more days. Suppose the Bearded Lady comes back? Could I face it? No . . . Not, at any rate, if we leave it all just like this; we can’t . . . She summoned up her courage.

“You said—Wednesday?”

“Yes, Wednesday.”

“We’ll be here till then?”

“Of course. Why?”

Oh, so difficult to say; but come on!—say it. She must know, he must have told her something, I daresay it’s happened before. Cards on the table, then.

“Will—will Mr. Tweed be here?”

Portia didn’t start, she didn’t stiffen. There was just a faint tinkle of trinkets and the sort of metallic click a gas-fire makes sometimes after the heat has been turned off.

“No. He won’t. He will be at the Authors’ Club in London . . . Do you want anything?”

In that moment Sylvia, looking up, met Portia’s eyes. They were calm, level, blank, but suddenly with a blast of inspiration Sylvia saw behind them. And she saw there a tired disgusted creature taking refuge in flight. Of course! All this Continent and peace and shaking up our Correspondents, it’s all just a blind. She’s bolting—just as I am. No sane person would go to the Continent just now; nobody but a lunatic would go there to talk Concord Crusades. Portia’s no lunatic. But she knows about—yesterday; I haven’t a doubt the little beast told her himself; I haven’t a doubt it’s happened before; and she’s sickened and humiliated and she’s got to get away.

Like me. She’s had enough of Humbug Hall meantime—as I have. There’s two of us.

And quite evidently she isn’t blaming me. She’s going out of her way not to blame me. She’s being decent, she’s being amazingly decent. And here I stand gaping like a fool. ‘Do you want anything?’

“Oh, no, no; no thank you! It was just—oh, never mind.”

Portia said snappishly, “Then do let us get on.” But at the back of her eyes the crouching humiliated thing said, “Thank you. Don’t give me away.”

Oh, poor Portia!

XII

Mr. George Cadman was neither more suspicious nor more inquisitive than any other Manager of a Bank whose staff was too small for its business. But just about the time when Rule was telling Sylvia all about the New Movement, he sat up after an interval of profound meditation and rang his bell. To the clerk who answered he said,

“There was a para about aircraft shares a little time ago in the Financial Record. See if you can find it.”

The clerk came back presently with the bulky Record file held open at an issue of a few days old.

“Is this it, sir?”

“Yes, that’s it all right . . . You needn’t wait.”

The clerk withdrew and George Cadman set himself to read with attention. The paragraph was a sub-leader in the Financial Record’s pontifical style.

“The announcements in regard to the new contracts for Air Defence were very much as expected and the market as a whole received them apathetically. The only surprise was the magnitude of the contracts awarded to some of the smaller firms—notably Bulloch Bros., Alnakers and United Carburetters, the first two of which at least have reaped a goodly harvest. Shares in these two companies jumped sharply and will in all probability go higher yet. As, however, profits in this industry will be under close supervision and control, there does not seem much to go for on the long view and neither to the investor nor the speculator do the shares hold out much real inducement at the higher prices now prevailing.”

George Cadman read the paragraph twice, rubbed his chin and picked up his telephone.

“I want the brokers . . . Give me Mr. Snell, please . . . Oh, hullo, Snellie; what are Alnakers Ordinaries today?”

“Round about seven shillings, old boy. Want to buy some?”

“No, thanks—not now. They’ve gone back a bit then?”

“Yes. They were rushed up to seven and ninepence; then there was some selling and they came back. I should think they’ll wobble round seven for a while and then drop back further. The rise was overdone.”

“Were there any big holders, do you know?”

“Don’t think so. There was a Yid syndicate said to be buying the things some time ago. They sold out and that brought the price down. I don’t really know very much about them. Find out if you like?”

“Oh, no; it doesn’t matter. I was just interested in the damned things.”

“I remember you asked me about them one day . . . I say, old boy, did I tell you the one about the Aberdonian who dreamt he was a lioness? Well, listen . . .”

George Cadman listened, laughed appropriately and put down his receiver. But he sat for a minute or two with a faint smile on his face that had nothing to do with the deluded Aberdonian . . . Some one must have known something about Alnakers. Or someone made a very smart guess. But—Yid syndicates? Yid syndicates don’t guess. So somebody knew. Well, of course, lots of people knew—had to in the course of their official work.

But somebody told . . . Still smiling, George Cadman rang his bell again—this time twice.

“Williams . . . Our client Miss Sylvia Savage’s address is care of Pelham Tweed Esquire, Hambling Hall, Herts. Do you know anything about Pelham Tweed Esquire—I mean, what he does for a living and so on?”

“No, sir.”

“Then see if you can find out, will you?”

XIII

It was six years since Sylvia’s last visit to Rome; the memories were pleasant and unpleasant—unpleasant because they were pleasant. That visit had centred largely in studios near the Croce Rossa; there had been Cesar, Ernesto Borelli the sculptor, little Bartolomeo. There had been a hilarious excursion to Tivoli; lunch in a temple overlooking the abyss; and Bartolomeo had fallen into the fish-pond at the Villa d’Este. Ah, well! No Tivoli, no Bartolomeo, no Cesar this time.

On the long rail journey Portia was a cold profile of frosted steel that with the endless grinding miles became at last collapsed and tragic. Sylvia sat thinking, I suppose she’s worrying about the Bearded Lady; I ought to be able to do or say something; I can’t. At any rate she doesn’t blame me and at any rate I’ve done my best. I’ll go on doing it . . . The intervening days at Humbug Hall had passed somehow, the Bearded Lady making no appearance, the first day had been distracted by the turmoils of Rule’s incompetent departure for Tangier, but on the second day Quashy had come and said—rather Quashily—

“I’m glad you’re sticking it out.”

Another of these clairvoyants, Sylvia had thought, who guesses or knows—like Pringle. She had muttered something noncommittal and Quashy had replied bitterly.

“Oh, cut it out. I hate my father. We all do.”

Taken aback by her vehemence, Sylvia asked if that wasn’t rather dreadful.

“Darling, you are so Nineteenth-Cent! People don’t have to like their relatives nowadays. We have got beyond that.”

“But you needn’t hate?”

“Well, I do. He’s so tiresome. If it wasn’t for him we wouldn’t have to live down in this god-awful woolly-west.”

This was a new idea; Sylvia’s eyebrows went up.

“Petness, you must have seen that we only live here because Mother can’t trust Father in London. Or don’t you ever see anything?”

Apparently, thought Sylvia, not; and I waste a lot of valuable sympathy thereby . . . So now, watching the angular profile at the opposite end of the second-class sleeper, she thought, I needn’t waste any more. Probably she’s only working out how many Jews there are to the square mile in Sudeten-Deutschland. I’ll keep quiet.

And keeping quiet, while the wheels rumbled and rattled from Paris to Modane, from Modane to Turin, from Turin to Pisa, Sylvia revolved another question. What will Conrad be like? My-son-Conerat? For on that second day had come also Axey, primed with enthusiasm. “My son Conrad! I am cabling to my son Conrad. He will be so-o delighted. He will meet you. He will do everything.” Portia’s almost explicit intimation that she didn’t in the least want to be bothered with my-son-Conrad struck unheeded on his ardour. “You stay at the Lombardia? Then my son Conrad shall call on you there. At once. As soon as you arrive. De-ar lady! No-o trouble!” Sylvia became so aggravated by Portia’s icy response to this flood of goodwill that she took Axey aside into a corner to comfort him. Somebody should.

“I’ll write and tell you exactly how he is.”

“Ah, yes—do!” But his face fell. “I am anxious a little. They say Mussolini has turned against the Jews, They say there will be Decrees—very soon now. But still I think he is well. Oh, yes!”

“I’ll write anyway.”

“That will be indeed a kindness.” He took her hand. “Indeed a kindness.”

. . . So now we are really rattling and rumbling towards my-son-Conerat; and I only hope Portia won’t be rude to him . . .

Sylvia’s first thought on reaching Rome was “Mussolini might have built himself a new station.” But Mussolini hadn’t, and there the inadequate ugly thing remained as on the day of Sylvia’s last departure from it . . . Cesar; Bartolomeo; laughter and the facile bad Italian jokes . . . Now, stop all that! Forget it.

Instead of Cesar and Bartolomeo there was Signor Umbertoli, that Rome “correspondent” of the Concord Crusade with whose work Portia was so poorly satisfied. He was a little bright man from Perugia, brown as a berry, simian of face, very non-Roman. In a shrill emasculated voice he chattered incessantly in indifferent English; he had a curious recurring expression which Sylvia at first thought to be some Italian novelty but which she presently identified as “Look-see!”

“Look-see, Signore! So you have come? You don’t be frightened of the war, no?”

Portia said something pertinent about Peace; Sylvia asked if there was going to be a war.

“No-o! Nev-ver! Il Duce will never allow there to be a war. Look-see!” He bundled them into a green taxi that smelt incongruously of horse. “You know, there is a good story about Il Duce. You see, Freud—you know Freud, the great Vienna doctor—he is dead and gone to Heaven. San Pietro is there to meet him at the gate. He says ‘You are Doctor Freud, no?’ Freud says ‘Jawohl! I am Freud.’ ‘You are great psychologist, non e vero? You can cure the mental troubles?’ ‘Jawohl’. ‘You can treat for the paranoia, the megalomania, eh?’ ‘Jawohl, jawohl.’ ‘Well come along, Herr Doctor; we need you.’ ‘Oh, and who is my patient, then?’ ‘Well, between ourselves, Herr Doctor, it is the Old Man himself; you see he thinks he is Mussolini.’” He yelled with an eldritch mirth that shook the taxi.

Portia looked shocked and displeased: Sylvia said, “I thought you weren’t allowed to tell stories like that.”

“Look-see! Not allowed? They make them all up in the Foreign Office. That is all they ever do there.”

Sylvia thought, “If that is really true, they mayn’t be so bad after all. If they can laugh at themselves.” Signor Umbertoli appeared to read her thought.

“Il Duce is a very human man, Signore. Very kind.”

Portia said leadingly, “Except to the Jews.” Sylvia thought, “Conrad. My-son-Conerat.”

“Ah, Missus Too-eed, how can you say it? Il Duce would nev-ver ill-treat the Jews. He is not like——”

“But he is driving them away? Those new Decrees—” Signor Umbertoli’s shoulders went up to his ears; his hands became seal’s flippers; he made the gesture of one stroking and pulling out a very long beard.

“A-ah, tha-at! Look-see, Signore, what we are to do? We are not to be eaten up by the Jews, no? In three months there is come into Italy twenty-five per cent more Jewish doctors, fifty per cent more Jewish teachers and professors. Fif-ty per cent, vi prego! In Milano—”

He began to reel off figures; Sylvia, losing interest gazed out of the window at the posters on the walls. “Lotta contra le mosche” . . . “Settembre 1938 XVI Festa Nazionale dell’ Uva” . . . “Lotteria di Merano Acquistate un biglietto. La Fortuna è di chi la prendera.” Very true; but where am I to seize mine? I am in Rome at any rate, a long way from Basil; a very long way from Basil. If there is a war we will quite likely be unable to get home again. Tanto miglior; it is very bad of me very wicked of me, but I almost hope there will be a war . . . I wonder when we shall see Conrad?

*  *  *

They saw Conrad that very evening; by arrangement over the telephone he came to the Hotel Lombardia for dinner, and through nerves or a mistaken courtesy he arrived twenty minutes too early. Sylvia was sitting dreaming in her room—a nice, quiet room overlooking the cortile—with a private bathroom and what not—when Portia in a dressing-gown came knocking.

“Sylvia! The concierge has just rung me up to say that Conrad Haase has come. If you’re ready, do go down and see to him. I shall be a few minutes. We mustn’t make him feel unwanted, must we.”

No, thought Sylvia, we mustn’t do that. But unfortunately the poor fellow will be greeted by a frump. Black silk utility frocks do not suit me and this one has been in a suitcase for three days and looks it. She dabbed on a little powder, thought of lipstick, abandoned the idea and went downstairs.

The Hotel Lombardia, like many Continental hotels, was distressingly short of public rooms; its Lounge was little more than an oblong box with double writing-tables round the sides and a bar at one end. Tonight it became, for the moment, no more than a setting for Conrad; what will he be like? Well, he was standing in the middle of the room, fingering his chin and gazing at the floor as if he were deep in some distant abstraction; first impressions, therefore—-he is tall, he is pale, he is hellishly unhappy. Second impressions—he is like Axey, he isn’t like Axey, he doesn’t look in the least like a Jew, he is handsome, he is not specially dark, he is worried to death, these are London clothes, I like him. She went forward.

“Doctor Haase?”

He started back from some blue distance of thought like a startled deer.

“I am Conrad Haase.” Conn-rad, he said; not Conerat.

“I’m Sylvia Savage—Mrs. Tweed’s secretary. Mrs. Tweed will be down in a minute. You’re early.”

He said he was afraid so, he was afraid so; and suddenly she saw Axey’s eyes.

“Well, have a drink anyway. A short one?”

“Thank you; a vermouth.”

They sat down in two armchairs with their drinks and began the inevitable search for topics. Sylvia was vaguely disappointed; if I’d met this young man in London . . . and I might have met him anywhere in London. He looks London, he talks London. No accent. He held his glass in long delicate hands; yet they were practical hands too—firm and strong; you could imagine a tennis racket in them, or a scalpel. Well, of course, he was a doctor . . .

“You’ve been a great deal in England, haven’t you?”

“I was at school there for some years. But I took my degree at Palermo.”

“Why Palermo?”

“Because they had a special course there in the subject I was interested in. Tropical medicine. Once I thought that was going to be a good thing for me; but now—”

He cut himself off short, just when he was on the point of becoming interesting; but not before Sylvia had seen once again Axey’s eyes. That haunted look behind the smile, that fear masked in suavity—you couldn’t mistake it. Portia came sweeping in—clashing jingling, charged with commanding charm.

“Doctor Haase! How nice of you to come to see us!”

He got up with Axey’s bow—a little Continental.

“Oh, no! Whatever I can do to help you in Rome. You must count on me . . .” But Sylvia, watching, saw that his heart said, “For God’s sake don’t count on me for anything!”

It was not a very bright dinner. Conrad was unmistakably distrait; he was polished, finished, polite, up to a point charming; but—he fenced, he made automatic replies, he petered out, he hid himself. It was dull, dull; and it might, Sylvia thought, be almost unbearably exciting. Beneath all this courteous tittle-tattle there is a fire burning, a destroying fire; we are sitting at table with a live bomb, charged and ready; it might explode—oh, if only it would explode . . . But it wouldn’t.

He was reassuring about the war. “I don’t think there will be a war.”

“Why not?”

“I could hardly tell you. I just feel that there will not be. Many do in Rome. They think Mussolini—. It doesn’t seem to be on, does it?”

Sylvia agreed; “I know what you mean.”

Portia began to tell them that the Czechs would fight; it developed into a bright little Portia lecture on Czechoslovakian independence. Clear and metallic, Portia’s ideas showered round the table like aluminium bullets, slaughtering intimacy. “If Russia helps them . . . unofficially . . . three months.” Conrad relapsed into urbane agreements, polite ‘Perhaps’s. Sylvia crumbled her bread; oh, Lord, this is a dull dinner—and it needn’t be, it needn’t be. There is a fire in Conrad, a burning blazing fire; set it free!

But Portia was fatal; as her exposition of Czech intransigence died a natural death, she changed the subject. “These anti-Jewish decrees, Doctor Haase; what are we to make of them?” Sylvia, raging, thought “Oh, you ass, you ass! Much too soon. Now you have shut him up.” And she had. Conrad was politely informative about the decrees; with a beautiful impartiality that was far too good to be true he said, “It is a very serious matter for us.” He said, “It may not be so bad as it looks.” He said, “Of course there is no real feeling here against the Jews,” and again, in the same breath, “Of course it is very serious.” And the pressure on the bomb inside him became so acute, Sylvia saw, that he grew quite pale and could only eat half his zabaglione. I must fire that bomb, she thought, I must—somehow; if I don’t it will blow him to pieces. Why should I care? I don’t know, but I do. After all, Axey was a dear to me . . . It’s not Axey; I like Cone-rat.

Over the coffee Portia’s eyes signalled, “This is awful; I can’t make anything of him at all.” Sylvia’s signalled back “Yes; dreadful,” but she thought, “If only I could get him to myself—for five minutes, for five minutes. I’d make him talk, I’d fire that bomb.” But there was no apparent likelihood of that. As the silences lengthened and intensified, Portia, growing desperate, suggested going out. “Perhaps a theatre?”

Conrad was afraid that all the best theatres were shut. “They don’t open till October.”

“Well, a concert?” But there were no concerts that evening.

“Well, then, a cinema?” Portia snatched a yellow bill at random from the bar. “Oh, yes. They have the Carnet de Bal at the Campidoglio; I didn’t see it in London; I’ve always wanted to. Let’s go.”

Conrad was afraid again—he was always “afraid”—that the Campidoglio was only a second-class cinema. “You won’t find it very comfortable.”

“Never mind about the cinema. It’s the film that matters. Don’t you think so, Sylvia?”

Sylvia said dutifully that she did; acutely watching Conrad, she thought he was perhaps relieved. At any rate, his face seemed to say, we now know the worst; at any rate in the Cinema Campidoglio she can’t talk to me about the anti-Jewish Decrees. Portia and Sylvia theoretically collected cloaks while Conrad theoretically called a taxi. This time Sylvia did apply the lip-stick—a shade too lavishly. I’m excited, she thought, I’m frightfully excited; why? It must be because Conrad is so blazingly excited underneath; he communicates it to me. Oh, how I wish that Portia would go to bed. And the annoying thing is—she’d like to. She’s bored; she doesn’t see the fire at all; it’s hard!

The Campidoglio was indeed a second-class cinema; it was tucked away in an alley off the Corso, contrasting sadly with the vast glittering gaiety of the Galleria Cafe opposite. Its seats were hard, its ceiling low, its atmosphere suffocating, its apparatus none too efficient. Its patrons—all of whom smoked overpowering toscani—treated it cavalierly; they went out slamming the uscita door noisily or left it ajar so that scraps of their loud conversation came in to interfere with the film. Yet it was one of the more violent of these exits that changed the evening—and more than the evening—for Sylvia. For this time the uscita door was jammed half-open so that the light from the passage came glaring in upon Conrad; and the sight of Conrad spot-lit and singled out in that sudden radiance was frightening. He was sitting tense as a ramrod, his hands were clenched, his lower lip was drawn in between his teeth and his eyes were—literally—desperate. There, between frumpy Sylvia in her black silk utility and Portia condescendingly bored in Mexican silver, there sat a pleasant young man in absolute hell.

Another Campidoglio patron shut the uscita door with a resounding slam; Conrad vanished again into the darkness. But not before Sylvia’s resolve was taken. I must not leave him alone; I must not leave him alone; I mustn’t. I thought he was distrait, perhaps angry, worried, resentful: now I see it is much much worse than that. Not all the brilliance of the Carnet de Bal, not the epileptic doctor, not Raimu’s self as the provincial mayor, could come between her and that vision of a young man in torment, a young man seeing horrors, a young man looking at—death.

But they sat it out, they sat it out, it came to an end . . . There was a taxi back to the hotel . . . polite interchange of compliments . . . “Will you come in and have a drink?” “Oh, no thank you; it is late.” “Well, thank you so much for looking after us so kindly, Doctor Haase”—jingle, clash, jingle—“We shall be seeing you again, of course”—and not meaning to if Portia could help it . . . And now, now’s my chance.

“Goodnight, Portia; I’ll just see if any letters have come in by the late post.” “Very well, Sylvia”—and a jaw-breaking yawn—Goodnight! . . . And now, quick; move yourself; he can’t have gone far.

“Oh! . . . Conrad!” (No more ‘Doctor Haase’s) “Aren’t you going home by taxi?”

He looked down at her—dazedly but with recovery, he was coming back to life.

“No. I live just along here. Just off the Via Sallustiana.”

“Oh! . . . I do want a breath of air after that cinema. May I walk a little way along with you?”

“But, of course.”

Of course. And now what? It’s like a funeral procession; tramp-tramp through the deserted streets—my high heels, his good solid honest-to-God English shoes. Tap-tap; tramp-tramp . . . The Sallustiana’s just at hand, and we’ve said nothing. Absolutely and literally nothing.

“Your father has been so kind to me, Conrad.”

“He would be. He is the kindest man I ever knew.”

“He worries a lot about you, you know.”

“He has reason.” The bomb fizzed, its fuse spluttered; but it didn’t go off. Instead, silence again. Tramp-tramp; tap-tap . . . And here is the Via Sallustiana.

I must do something; he mustn’t be allowed to get away. Or he’ll never come back . . . Must do something. Halt under this street lamp, look as attractive as you can, get hold of him somehow.

“Well, I think that’s far enough. I think I’ll turn back now. But—look, Conrad, I do want to see you again. I’ve got heaps to talk to you about—I want to tell you about your father—he gave me all sorts of messages—I haven’t got a thing said this evening . . .”

Babble-babble; but did his eyes wake just the least little bit? He’s considering me; he thinks I’m not bad. Hold it!

“Yes, yes, we must meet again. Oh, certainly . . . Perhaps—”

Back to politeness again, back to ‘perhaps’s. Well, be a hussy; go for it.

“We’re only here for a week. Perhaps less. I suppose—I suppose you aren’t by any chance free tomorrow afternoon—”

He considered it. “Tomorrow? Sunday. I have no work on Sundays.”

“Portia has a meeting—” Or I’ll see that she does. Now if he says he’s going out of Rome for the day, I’m done. But either he was an unready liar, or politeness and duty prevailed a stage further; or perhaps he even thought the prospect of more Sylvia agreeable.

“What time is her meeting?”

“Oh—fourish. Four to six or so.” (It’ll have to be.)

“Then—” I’ve won! I’ve won!—“could you perhaps come and have tea with me? Where—”

“Why not your flat? I haven’t been inside a Roman flat for years. I’d love to see it. In fact, Axey—your father—said I was to.”

He smiled at last. “Then you must, mustn’t you . . . Well, then, about four o’clock tomorrow? I shall look forward to it.”

(You’ll look forward anyway; not back—as you were looking in that awful cinema.)

“Splendid! . . . Well, goodnight, Conrad.”

“Goodnight—er—Miss Savage.”

“Goodnight . . .”

And so far, so good; so far, so good. But he must not be left alone. I don’t care what happens; he mustn’t be.

I’ll see that he isn’t.

*  *  *

With disconcerting immorality, Heaven steps in at times to aid the economical and resourceful liar; in the present instance either the dinner or the Campidoglio or both disagreed violently with Portia and she announced her intention of spending Sunday in bed. It became the easiest and most natural thing in the world for Sylvia to “take a turn round Rome” in the late afternoon.

In the meantime there was a long dreary Sunday to put in. For part of the forenoon the Lounge of the Lombardia was blasted by the broadcast of Mussolini’s speech from Trieste; this was on the conventional lines—fifty words of Mussolini followed by fifty seconds of solid and concerted applause. “Du-ce, Du-ce, Du-CE!” like a College yell. A good speaker, if noisy, but the College yell a little overdone. The whole thing made a rather alarming din; war-drums roaring in an African swamp, belligerent and terrifying. With a sinking heart one began to doubt the evidence of one’s senses, the confidence of the good Umbertoli. It was difficult—indeed impossible—to believe that the people one met had any intention or desire for war; there was no “feel” of it in the air; Customs officials and Police on the journey had been unusually kind and agreeable; the Roman news-vendors and shop-assistants were ready for amicable chat. Yet—that growling snarling animal uproar from the north brought the Bogey dismally to life.

Portia was displeased with Signor Umbertoli. “He’s been doing nothing; the Concord Crusade here is making no headway at all. There’s nothing but a sort of backwash of the Friends of Italy—a lot of silly old women and Americans.”

Sylvia suggested that it must be difficult for them.

“They’re not supposed to talk Peace here.”

“Who is—these days? It only requires a little courage. I shall speak to Umbertoli pretty sharply.”

And a lot he’ll care, thought Sylvia; oh dear, will it never be four o’clock?

It was four o’clock in God’s good time and Sylvia in her black coat and skirt set out for the Sallustiana. (And, say what you like, I am looking rather nice today; surely he must see it.) Now to find Conrad’s flat. There was a very fine modern building—all steel and glass--; just opposite the German Evangelical Church; Sylvia hoped that Conrad might occupy a section of it, but no such fortune. He was found to live instead in an old pinkish-yellow apartment house; its liverish colour, its frowning cornices and its rows of shuttered windows would have discouraged a fairy prince. So would the sour old concierge whom Sylvia interrupted in the enjoyment of a meal of bread and onions. On the way up in the lift—there was, rather unexpectedly, a lift—he regaled her with a flood of complaints in rapid and very Roman Italian, directed mainly against the lady on the top floor. “If I sit down for one moment to eat a morsel of food, it is Ring, ring, ring; you are late; why do you not come when I summon you? Twenty times a day, vi prego; I have only to pick up an onion—” He decanted Sylvia at the door of number eight and shot off downwards, still complaining.

Sylvia had been hoping that the inside of Conrad’s flat might be less savagely depressing than its exterior; her heart sank when she saw it. His sitting-room was furnished with ugly Milano bentwood stuff—a legacy from German salesmen after the war. It was a gloomy room, dark and congested. There was an overgrown palm in a pot; there was an upright piano; there was a hideous porphyry bust that might have been Nero but was more probably the landlord’s Garibaldian grandfather. I should go mad here, thought Sylvia, even if everything was going well; what must it be?

Conrad had provided a delightful tea and he had intended to provide a delightful Conrad; but in the latter attempt he failed. He was, she saw at once, even more on edge than on the previous evening; he was pale, taut nervous, holding himself in. In the night, in that dreary Sunday forenoon—and no doubt he had heard Mussolini; indeed, it was unavoidable anywhere in Rome—the slow fuse of the bomb had burned away an inch or two of its length. Sylvia thought with a start, No time to lose.

It was easy to open again about Axey. “Your father has been so kind to me.” “He would be.” We said that before. “He helped me so kindly over a money difficulty I had.” “I’m sure he would be delighted to do anything.” We aren’t any further on. “He worries about you a lot.” “Oh, but that’s ridiculous. I’m very well; I’m very comfortable; just look at my palatial apartment.” Oh Lord I we’re going backwards. “When did you see him last, Conrad?” “About two years ago.” “Was that in England?” “No, Paris; I haven’t been in England for some time.” “You don’t think of going over to pay him a visit?” “Oh, no; not just now; I have a great deal to do here just now.” (What can you have to do?—now.) “He’d love it, Conrad.” “Oh, so would I; but we must just look forward . . . Will you have a cigarette? I hope you like Macedonias.” .. . End of the first round; progress—nil.

“Don’t you find it fearfully hot in Rome just now, Miss Savage?” “Yes, tropical.” “Perhaps, then, you’d care to come out for a little drive? I have my car here. We could go through the Borghese and out to the Foro Mussolini. That’s new; I expect you haven’t seen it?” No, I haven’t seen it and I don’t want to—but how can I say so? I want to sit here in this dismal furniture-shop and sit over you till you bring out that something, whatever it is, that’s killing you, that’s eating you up inside. Damn the Foro Mussolini! “I—-er—I feel the sun on my eyes a bit; I stupidly haven’t brought my dark glasses; perhaps we could wait a little?” That’s the best I can do. He is accepting it—he can’t do anything else, but we are drifting into silences. He means to play out time . . . End of the second round—worse than the first.

There is a tennis racket hanging on that wall; let’s try that . . . “I see you play tennis; I believe if it hadn’t been for me you’d have been playing this afternoon?” At last, at last, a ray of hope; his face broke down, it unmasked itself, it softened, it fell, it became human.

“Not this afternoon.”

“Aren’t you keen on tennis?”

“Yes; very.”

“Then I expect you’re very good.”

“Oh, no—not first-class. But I played for the Club.” (He named it; it was a leading Club.) “Last month I won—oh, well!”

“Oh, well, what? Why wouldn’t you have been playing today?”

“Because—” he made an attempt, a bitterly unsuccessful attempt, at a smile—“Because the Club has asked me not to.”

“O-oh! I see. The Decrees.”

“The Decrees. I’m a Jew.”

“But—but—oh, Conrad, you’re hardly a Jew.”

“I’m not orthodox; I’m a free-thinker. But my parents were Jews; I came to Italy after 1919—as a matter of fact, I came here only last April; there you have it. Ecco!”

“Where were you before April?”

“Vienna.”

“Oh!”. . . (A dark-sounding name, Vienna.) “And now they’ll turn you out of here?”

“Of course. What else? I have a friend—Becchini, an Italian Jew—he fought for them all through the war, he’s got a chestful of ribbons. Now his two boys are told not to come back to school. When you hear that—well, I can’t complain, can I?”

“I think you can . . . Oh, Conrad!”

Perhaps the sympathy in her voice was overdone, perhaps she spoke too soon; at any rate his face tightened, the mask went back into place. He reverted to politeness. “If it’s too early for a drive perhaps you’d like . . . I have some photographs from Abyssinia, rather interesting. I was interested in tropical medicine, you know—I think I told you . . .” Drawing-room, drawing-room, the perfect little gentleman. Politely amusing the guest who would come, who wouldn’t go . . . End of the third round; fatal. Damnation! I’ve lost him.

He kept it up till five-thirty when Sylvia herself could stand it no longer and said she must be going. “But”—half-heartedly, oh very half-heartedly—“our drive? The Foro?” “Oh, I’m afraid it’s too late for that now. I promised Portia—Mrs. Tweed—six o’clock, not later. She’s not very well today; I mustn’t let her down . . .” Babble, babble; and so to the lift. “A rivederci,” “A rivederci, Conrad.”

A fizzle. A complete and absolute fizzle. Damn!

For nearly an hour Sylvia sat on the cold stone steps of the Trevi Fountain. If you throw a coin into the Trevi, you will come back to Rome . . . Well, I threw in a soldo last time and here I am, here I am . . . Yes, but Cesar threw one in too . . . Cesar; Cesar; Conrad: there’s a terrible parallel there. Cesar was desperate; so is Conrad. Cesar put an end to it; Conrad—? I’m frightened I . . . I seem to hear Mussolini roaring again somewhere; too many loud-speakers in Rome . . . “Italia ha fatto la scelta”. “Credere, ubbidire, combattere.” “Du-ce, Du-ce, Du-CE!” “Because—because the Club has asked me not too.” Oh Trevi Fountain, did ever your Trevi water, in all Rome’s very darkest hours, splash into a more damnable, a more fatuous world!

Yet there is one morsel of comfort, one ray of sunshine breaking through the descent of these impenetrable clouds. Just while we were waiting for the lift, just when I had given up all expectation and was making my shameful escape—a nuisance, an intruder—he said suddenly.

“You’ve been very kind—er—Miss Savage.”

“Try ‘Sylvia ‘.”

“Well, Sylvia. Very kind. Don’t think I don’t appreciate—”

“You know I—” But I wasn’t going to overdo it this time! “It’s you who have been kind.”

And then he looked down into my eyes—and I only hope they were like I meant them to be—and he said, so surprisingly,

“There’s something I might ask you to do for me. Perhaps . . . I believe you would.”

I nodded; it was all I could do. And then up shot that beastly concierge like a pantomime demon, champing and glaring and reeking of toscani. And so—A rivederci.

Cling to that meantime. He’ll never do it. But cling to it all the same.

*  *  *

The next two days were of a concentrated tedium which in the end amounted to nightmare. Wherever one went—in the Cafés of the Veneto, in the shops of the Tritone, in the English quarter round the Piazza di Spagna—the talk was all of one subject—the Czechs, the Czechs, the Czechs. What is going to happen? So far nobody seemed to contemplate any serious developments; war continued to appear incredible, but then—how does one get out of an impasse? Il Duce was going bellowing round the north of Italy, not saying very much, no doubt, but always bellowing—never a softer or a relenting word. If you sat down for a few minutes in what you took to be a quiet corner—the Piazza San Giovanni, for instance—the air above you burst into sudden cracklings and rumblings and out of metal trumpets on the roofs of houses came once again the voice of the Bogey, roaring like a pride of lions. “Italy is this; Italy is that; Italy will do so-and-so”, “Du-ce! Du-ce! Du-CE!” All mumbo-jumbo? A put-up show? A trained claque? Perhaps; perhaps not; frightening anyway. As if, in an exposed city, you heard the distant gunfire coming nearer, nearer.

Portia, happily recovered, gave Signor Umbertoli his dressing-down and, as Sylvia had prophesied, made little of it. Umbertoli sought flight in enthusiastic praises of Il Duce, in more funny stories from the Foreign Office, in reassurances that Mussolini was far too clever to allow a war. “Look-see!” Anything, in fact, rather than explain, in response to Portia’s urgent demands, why he had done nothing whatever to forward the Concord Crusade, why the membership had decreased rather than expanded, why his reports to England were at utter variance with a number of demonstrable facts. After one of these interviews Sylvia found him consoling himself with a Peroni in the Lounge of the Lombardia; at sight of her he blew out his brown cheeks and made an expressive Italian gesture.

“Mees-us Too-eed, she don’ understand. ’Ow it is possible to talk jus’ now about making peace?”

“But you keep telling us there won’t be any war.”

“Ah, war! No-no-no. No war. But Peace—that is different.”

Portia, thought Sylvia, has one of those single-track minds, commonly miscalled strong, that won’t allow her to abandon any plan once formed. It’s quite evident that we’re doing no conceivable good here; even supposing the Concord Crusade to be a reality, it’s plain, as poor Umbertoli says, that this is not the moment. Not with those loud-speakers going off like machine-guns every other hour; and the newspaper headlines deafening us in between. Clearly we ought to go home; or at least she ought to; I, of course, don’t. What will happen?

That even Portia’s mind was assailed at times by the demon doubt, was made evident at lunch when she said suddenly, “I’m wondering about Vienna. I’m wondering whether to go on or not.”

Sylvia thought, I couldn’t let her go on to Vienna by herself; I’d much rather be left here than in Vienna; and I’ll have to leave her somewhere. Aloud she said, guardedly, “Perhaps it would be wiser—”

Portia stiffened at once. “There’s no sense in being pusillanimous.”

“No, but if there’s going to be a war—”

“There isn’t going to be a war. I shall go on believing till the last possible gasp that nobody could be such a fool. Whoever starts a war now is starting a revolution as well. Does anybody want that? . . . And I’m very anxious to see our Vienna friends.”

Sylvia thought, If you know so well what you want, why ask me? Why keep wondering? She said, “Of course if there isn’t going to be a war—?

“Then let us suppose there isn’t and act accordingly. Like sensible beings. I think you had better go round to Ala Littoria, Sylvia, and book our seats. Saturday, I think. There doesn’t seem much use in hanging around here with a drone like Umbertoli, but I want to go to the Duchessa Montrini’s reception on Friday. And I must see about getting a new correspondent. Book the seats anyway; the planes are small and the Manager here says four seats every day are taken up by Foreign Office couriers going to Prague. It’s ridiculous.”

After lunch Sylvia went round to the Piazza dell’ Esedra and booked the seats without difficulty. She said to the Ala Littoria clerk who was making out the tickets, “What do you think will happen?” and he began brightly, “Il Duce—”; but when she said, smiling, “No; what do you really think?” his face crumbled suddenly and he made that strange Italian beard-pulling gesture and he said very miserably, “God knows.” Sylvia picked up the tickets to check the dates; “Saturday September 24th”, she read; and thought, So by that time I must have done something about Conrad. And if I haven’t? Then Portia must just go on to Vienna by herself and if she fetches up in Dachau I just can’t help it.

She rang Conrad up that evening immediately before dinner; if he thinks I’m mad or designing, if he thinks I’m a nymphomaniac, it simply doesn’t matter. He’s in danger, in danger; that’s the point.

“Hullo, Conrad. I—I just rang up. Are you all right?”

“Oh, yes, thank you.” A little puzzled—small blame to him.

“What have you been doing all day?”

“Oh, not much. You see, there isn’t very much for me to do just now.” (But yesterday you said there was.) “I’ve packed some things, written some letters—”

“Packed, have you? I hope that means you’re going to take my advice and go across to England and see your father.”

There was a pause.

“Oh, well, some day, of course. I can’t just yet.”

“Some day soon.”

“As soon as I can manage.”

Another pause. This is just silly.

“Conrad, if there’s anything I can do to help you, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”

“Yes. Yes, of course . . . You’re exceedingly kind; don’t think I don’t——”

“Don’t say that again. I’ll know you appreciate it when you come and ask me something. Goodnight meantime.”

He’s alive anyway; he isn’t any worse; he sounds just as he did. But I know he’s in dreadful danger. What danger and how do I know? I can’t tell you. But I can tell you that if I were only free to do as I liked I’d go round and stay beside him till I’d helped him out of it. What’s it got to do with me? I don’t know that either; I haven’t had time to think about it. I only know—a lot; an immense lot; everything . . .

*  *  *

The next day, September 20th 1938, was worse. Mussolini was still at it—bellowing, bellowing; guarded words, no doubt, but they sounded at least like the most horrible incitements; they came out of the loud-speakers rasping and crackling like gunfire. The news from Prague was bad; the Czechs are going to fight; God help us, we shall all be into it . . . Portia broke finally with Signor Umbertoli; he made a whirlwind departure from the Lombardia waving his arms and chattering like an ape. “I am not a saint, me. Look-see! I don’ work miracle, no!” Decent little man, thought Sylvia; like all of us, he knows that if there’s a war he’s got to go and be killed; no wonder he gets impatient with Portia and her Concords.

Portia spent the morning dictating long letters to Vienna; she was going on to Vienna now, whatever happened. And Prague? As to that, we would see.

The day dragged on. After tea, in desperation, Sylvia took a tram and walked round the Baths of Caracalla; there was something in that decayed magnificence, that vast hideous clay-and-brick ruin which appealed soothingly to her mood. Also it was pleasant to see ordinary people doing ordinary things—sitting about eating chestnuts, teaching a baby how to toddle, kissing a girl in a secluded corner. They weren’t worrying; they trusted Il Duce; something to be said for the totalitarian standpoint there. They were reassuring anyway; chestnuts, babies, kisses—yes; War—no!

And then, an hour or two later, the day changed completely.

It was while Sylvia was in her beautiful private bathroom having a bath before dinner to wash off the dust of Caracalla; the telephone on her bedroom table suddenly rang. Cursing, she wrapped one of the Lombardia’s generous towels round her middle and, wet and cross, snatched up the receiver. Portia, no doubt, having thought of some fresh nonsense for Vienna.

“Hello!”

“Sylvia? Is that you, Sylvia.”

“C-Conrad! . . . Yes, Sylvia here.”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes. I’m in my room.”

“Then—are you doing anything tonight after dinner?”

“Nothing except yawn.”

“I can help you with that.” A hint of laughter in his voice for once. “I was going to ask—could you come for a little stroll with me? I want to ask you something.”

Can I come for a little stroll with him? He wants to ask me something. Can I! . . . But—calmly, now, as if it didn’t so much matter—

“Yes, of course. What time?”

“I’ll call for you soon after eight.”

“Mrs. Tweed likes to dine late. Make it nine.”

“All right. Nine, then.”

“Nine . . . Conrad, I’m most frightfully glad you’ve—. . . Conrad?” . . . Oh, hell, he’s put down the receiver . . .

Never mind; he’s going to trust me after all. He’s going to trust me; thank God!

She became suddenly aware that her towel had fallen to the floor, that the window was uncurtained and that a young Italian on the opposite side of the cortile was making the most of his opportunities . . .

Who cared?

XIV

At precisely nine Conrad came. He arrived in his car—one of those minute Fiats which Rome calls “topolini” and which do indeed possess an evilly rat-like air with their scurrying gait and their headlights sunk in the wings like wicked little eyes. Conrad himself looked tired; even in the short time I have known him, Sylvia thought, he has grown older; probably he isn’t eating or sleeping properly. Well, we must change all that; I must change it.

Conrad was in the babbling stage of nervous politeness.

“I thought we might take the car to the top of the steps above the Piazza di Spagna—you know, the Trinità dei Monti—and then walk along the Pincio. It’s a pleasant sort of walk. Of course, the Pincio isn’t what it was——”

“It never was, Conrad—like Punch. Anyway, we never saw it then, we won’t miss anything. We’ll like it now.”

“Then shall we—?”

“Whatever you say, Conrad.” Yes, indeed; whatever or wherever you say, so long as you keep on trusting me and talking to me and stop being bottled up and let yourself go.

Driving along, Sylvia felt that ethereal detachment enjoyed by those who share with one other a vehicle moving independently of the rest of earth. The topolino scurried mildly through the cool night; it was agreeable. From Sylvia to Conrad something passed and came back from Conrad to Sylvia a little augmented; a warmth, a contiguity, a closeness. What had been two separate strips of being made contact here and there and fused at scattered points into one. Very scattered so far; but still—points. Sylvia thought, We are beginning to make sense. Need I listen to what he is saying? No. He is just blethering with his tongue and one corner of his mind, expounding to me as if I were a stranger to Rome . . . My dear, I know that is the Villa Ludovisi, I know all about it and who lived in it and when and why . . . I shan’t listen; I shall enjoy, think, prepare myself. I am going to need myself pretty badly before this night is over.

They left the car at the Trinità and walked along past the grotto to the Belvedere. It was a still night with veiled stars; below them, to the left, streets ran away into a calm immensity of darkness. Somewhere on the other side of the river there lifted a dim bulk that should be the dome of St. Peter’s; the Janiculum light from its little tower flashed in monotonous sequence—red, yellow, green; red, yellow, green. You could see a bit of the Vittorio Emanuele monument shining and brilliant in the floodlights from the Piazza Venezia. Conrad pointed them all out conscientiously; Sylvia said, “Yes, Conrad, yes.” Then slowly he fell silent. They turned into the comparative darkness of the Pincio gardens—a dusky enchanted sort of place; a black river of road; white marble busts shining on their pedestals, silk-stockinged legs shining from the seats. It was like going down into water, deep water peopled by luminous immobile fish. Down and down; Conrad quite silent now. We are going deeper yet.

“Sylvia!”

“Conrad?” At last!

“I told you I wanted you to do something for me.”

“Yes. What?”

“It’s nothing much, nothing very difficult. I want you to take a message to my father.”

“Of course I will. What is it?”

“It’s quite simple.” But he halted suddenly and stood quite still, still as the marble busts on their posts. “It’s just this. I’m going to kill myself.”

Silence, dead silence, a complete pause of the universe. There! It’s out; he’s said it. And now, what am I to say? Oh, God, if you never allow me anything else, allow me to find the right word now, because this is vital. Don’t squeal, Sylvia, anyway; whatever you do, don’t squeal. Don’t say, “Oh, you mustn’t!” He said, “I am going to kill myself.” He means it. So now, quite quietly and sensibly, “I thought that was in your mind, Conrad.”

“How could you?” He was startled. “It’s impossible—”

“Yes, I did. I saw it.”

“Well, then—” they began to move forward again slowly, step by step—“well then, if you saw that much, you must see also that it’s the only thing I can do . . . It’s the only right thing to do.”

“It’s the only wrong thing to do.”

“Oh, nonsense! It’s what people—my kind of people—did in Vienna. Last March. I thought of doing it in Vienna last March. I see now I should have done it. But I thought I could make a fresh start. For a time things looked better. I thought—I might have known—damned fool!”

Now what shall I say, what shall I say? Leave out the metaphysics of the thing, leave out the morals; don’t argue. Get him away from it, make him talk, explode that sizzling bomb. Pick up that word—that dark-sounding word—‘Vienna.’

“What happened in Vienna?”

“A lot.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I don’t think I could”—But they were moving forward, slowly, step by step, deeper and deeper—“I don’t think I could tell anyone about Vienna.”

“You’ve never tried. Try now.”

“I couldn’t . . . It’s too terrible . . . It’s not fit—”

“Anything you could live through I can hear . . . Tell, Conrad.”

Another silence. Slowly forward into the dark garden. Somewhere on the right the Restaurant Valadier blazing; a dance band—a very bad one—thumping and tootling. Big green electric letters “Danze”. Ahead, a profounder darkness, the busts of the Martyrs glimmering like ghosts; on into that. Still silence; destiny hanging in the balance . . . If he turns me down now, I’m finished. So is he. It’s death.

“I—I’ll try, Sylvia.”

Ah-h!

*  *  *

They lived in Hietzing, that pleasant south-western suburb next door to and beyond Schönbrunn; Axel Haase and Conrad Haase, Jews. “My mother was dead long ago; I hardly remember her.” They lived in a flat in the Woltergasse, pleasant and sunny, with a garden common to the whole building. “You knew these Hietzing flats, Sylvia?” No, Conrad. “Well, they have nice little gardens with a high railing—quite private. Generally we had ours to ourselves.” It was a delightful place, apparently; chestnut-trees, roses, a little lawn, a summerhouse for tea on fine afternoons. “Not grand of course, but very comfortable.” So—at Hietzing in the Woltergasse, Axey and My-son-Conerat, living very happily and at ease.

“Years ago—four years ago anyway—my father saw it coming. He said, ‘Hitler will not rest; there will be Anschluss; read Mein Kampf; we shall have to get out of this’.” So Axey, in some clever—perhaps rather Jewish?—way, got rid of most of his business to a syndicate who didn’t believe in Mein Kampf, transferred his money to British Industrials—which were then enticingly cheap—and made ready to transfer himself to London and try, in God’s good time, for naturalisation. (“He must have been very rich, Conrad?” “He had a good deal. He’s made more since.” “How, Conrad?” “I don’t know” . . .) “He said to me, ‘Come along; I’ll buy you a London practice.’ I had just set up as a doctor, you see, in Vienna. But I said—oh, the damned fool that I was, the damned bloody fool—I said I wanted to stay. I was interested in my special work—tropical medicine, I think I told you; I didn’t think they knew much about tropical medicine in London—no more they do. I wanted to study it a lot more. Besides, I had the idea—and that was quite right—that our people would need doctors and if ever the anschluss came they’d need them more than ever. We heard that in Germany the Nazi doctors often daren’t treat Jews, however much they’d have liked to. They would have if they could; it’s an extraordinary thing, but almost all Germans are really kind and good—only unfortunately they go mad . . . My God, they do! . . . Anyway I thought I should stay; I wanted to stay; I did stay.”

So now, in the Woltergasse, Conrad living by himself but still happy and in comfort.

“I used to walk home every evening through the Schönbrunn Gardens or sometimes I’d go up and sit at the Gloria. Now, I expect, you’d see notices up ‘Für Juden verboten,’ but nobody thought of these things then. I didn’t. My God, Sylvia, I was a fool! Well, I was punished for it.”

“Fools are, Conrad. Worse than knaves. Go on.”

“Then—March 1938; Anschluss; another Hitler dream come true. “But it was a nightmare for us, Sylvia.” It was so final; there was nothing to do, nothing to do any more. On the night of March eleventh to twelfth the ambulances brought seventy suicide attempts into the Vienna General Hospital—“not all Jews, but most of them”. You couldn’t get away—except to Dachau. Brueder Schiffmann’s stores were sacked. Buerckel, the Reichskommissar, came down upon the sackers, but Buerckel went off to the Saargebiet for his Easter holidays—“and then we paid for it, Sylvia. They went about painting ‘Pig-Jew’, ‘Thief-Jew’, on the shop windows; if an Austrian—a German—bought in a Jew shop he was led through the streets with a poster round his neck or they made him sit in the shop window and hired street cads to jeer at him . . . Or so they say. I didn’t see much of it really.”

“Why not, Conrad?”

“Because I was in prison—in the Elizabeth-strasse prison.”

“But—Conrad! Why? What charge?”

“Oh, charge! They didn’t bother about charges. They ran you in for anything—for taking a photograph of Hitler when he came to Vienna, even if you never had a camera. Or they said you’d been performing abortions—they tried to charge me with performing an abortion long before I was ever a doctor—when I was in Palermo.

If you even went near the Sacher Cafe—you know behind the Opera—where the rich Jews used to go. Or they just rounded you up off the streets—if you were unlucky enough to be out of doors, in you went into the Elizabeth-strasse. The way they got me in the end—I don’t know if I ought to tell you this “

“Con-rad!”

“Well a young S.A. fellow came to me one night and said he had a disease—a pretty beastly disease, you can probably guess. He hadn’t got it—which ought to have warned me, but I charged him a few shillings and sent him away. He went straight round to the S.A. headquarters and reported that I’d overcharged him. That, of course, was what he came for. Round they came for me; in I went.”

Sylvia reached out and took his hand. “You’re shivering, Conrad.”

“You’d shiver if you’d been in the Elizabeth-strasse. My God, that place! Yet in a way I was lucky—worse things happened to fellows who were out of it. A friend of mine—they said he’d been living with an Austrian girl and as a matter of fact he had and she was deeply in love with him—they said, ‘You won’t go with girls any more; we’ll see to that’, and they did. I daresay you can guess what they did to him—I can’t tell you. The girl shot herself—but they didn’t allow that to be mentioned. She was a nice girl; he was a nice fellow. Was! . . .”

Sylvia kept his hand in her own; it was cold, cold.

“The Elizabeth-strasse, Conrad. They knocked you about?”

“No, they didn’t actually do that, I’m bound to say. But they just didn’t do anything for us. To give you an example, there was a sort of convenience thing in the middle of the room; something went wrong with the plumbing and it overflowed all over the place. There were ninety of us in that small room; you can imagine; we had to take it in turns to lie down and even then They said, ‘Yes, yes it will be seen to’, but it never was. They took their cue from Buerckel—promises and promises that were never kept. And, of course, men got ill and the doctors—”

On and on, along the dark endless labyrinth of the Pincio, as far as the Casina delle Rose, about turn, back again to the Martyrs. Conrad shaking and shivering and telling about the Elizabeth-strasse prison. Men—Jews—were there dying of consumption; could they not be sent to hospital? “Why? He’s only another Jew.” Ringworm, skin diseases, worse; ninety men in a small room; “another Jew, let him die” . . . (But I’ve got hold of his hand now, I’m getting through to him; that something that passes between us is growing stronger and stronger, the points of fusion are multiplying, tightening. Was that eleven o’clock? What does it matter? Nothing shall make me leave him now.)

And then suddenly, at the end of April, Conrad and several others were told they were free. No reason given. “I said, ‘Why was I put in here?’ ‘You know quite well.’ ‘I don’t; I never did.’ ‘Well, you’re getting out now, aren’t you? Aren’t you glad?’ I was glad, I suppose, but when I did get out I wished I had died in the jail. My friends had been mostly doctors or people in the University; they had all been dismissed and a great many of them were dead. They did the right thing; I didn’t. God knows how many Jews killed themselves in Vienna in these two months. You can’t find out. You see, the Jewish community only register the suicides of orthodox Jews who’ve paid their religious taxes; but there were any amount of Jews who never confessed religion and any amount of half-Jews who wouldn’t be registered at all. God knows . . . perhaps two thousand . . .

“I went back to Hietzing. They’d left my flat more or less alone, but the first things I got were a notice from my landlord telling me to quit—they said the flats were wanted for air officers for the new airport, but of course it wasn’t that—and a bill for petrol and oil for the running of my car which they’d confiscated in the middle of March. I had to pay and I had to go . . . I was lucky, I could do something for myself; I hadn’t to depend on that fraud Gildemeester or the Emigration Siegfried David. I had friends in Italy. Or I thought I had. My God, I thought I had!”

“You had your father, Conrad.”

“I know, Sylvia, I know. But—you see, I was keen on my work; I loved it, Sylvia, I can’t tell you how much I loved it, it was just everything to me. My father wrote, ‘Come to London’, but I couldn’t see any prospects in London except general practice. I hate general practice. And just then my friend in Rome—Schiotti, it was, in the University—wrote offering me something in my own line and of course I thought—I thought heaven had opened once again. After all, I thought, there is a future, there is something good . . . Good God in Heaven, the fool I was, the blind silly idiot fool! But wouldn’t anyone . . .?”

“Go on, Conrad.” . . .

*  *  *

For a time it must indeed have looked as if fate had relented after all. In Rome they gave Conrad work after his own heart; he took his flat in the Sallustiana, he put up his plate, but he did very little in the way of private practice. “They gave me a job, you see—a part-time job—as an assistant lecturer at the University—in the medical school. I was just what they wanted—you know that since they took on Abyssinia there’s been an intensive study of tropical medicine, they can’t get enough fellows who know anything about it. I had the goods; they grabbed me. It did seem for a time as if my luck had turned—my God, I really think anybody would have believed it . . .”

They were infinitely reassuring, too, about Jews. Our Mussolini wants Jews—anyway he’ll never turn against them. He’s said so himself. You can trust our Mussolini. “And of course I had my Palermo diploma.” Fascists aren’t Nazis, they said; this anti-Semitism is a Nazi idea; it’s nothing to us. Do you suppose that Mussolini is going to take his cue from Hitler? What an idea! Nobody in Rome dislikes Jews—“And that was true enough, Sylvia, you can see it today.” This is Italy, they said, not Berlin; Mussolini has said he has no objection to Jews; what Mussolini says is God’s eternal truth; he doesn’t chop and change; you can trust him . . . “I trusted him—and them . . . Sylvia, wasn’t I a fool?”

“Of course not, Conrad. You couldn’t know. Go on.”

It had been all right for a brief month or so; then the doubts began that had swelled in crescendo ever since. To begin with some of the Jewish doctors were doing far too well—“there was one fellow especially, Sylvia, I won’t mention any names, he got in with the royal family, I daresay you can guess who I mean.” Not content with doing well, some of them must foolishly make a splash about it. “The old story—asking for trouble. My people have always done it; they never learn.” The papers began to drop hints—especially the Fiume, which became more and more bitterly outspoken with every week that went by. “But I went on trusting and hoping. I thought ‘I’ve been ruined once, it can’t happen again, a shell never bursts twice in the same place and so on. Mussolini didn’t seem to be wavering. I thought, ‘It’ll be all right; they’ll find some means of suppressing some of the bigger men and they’ll leave the rest of us alone’” . . . And then . . .

In the middle of August the Fiume let fly in earnest; it published a list of Jewish doctors in Rome and insisted that they must all go. “I remember it so well; a friend of mine, Fenella—a Jew like myself—brought the paper into the laboratory where I was working. ‘Here you are,’ he said, ‘here it comes again.’ I said, nonsense, it was only the Fiume. ‘Well, my friend,’ he said, ‘ they’ve got your name down anyway.’ I wouldn’t believe it till he showed me; but there it was—‘Haase, C.’ The name of that fellow I was just telling you about was in it too. Big and small—they were after us both. I tried to laugh at Fenella, but I think even then I knew, I knew—

“I said to Fenella, ‘I’ve been through this once; I can’t do it twice’. He said ‘No, not twice; one couldn’t’. We shook hands; I think we both cried a little. We saw it all coming”. . .

And then, at last and of course, the Decrees. Dated 7th September, published 12th. Final. One had hoped against hope; now there it was in black and white. Jews who entered Italy after 1919 to be out of it within six months. A Jew, whatever his religion, defined as the product of two Jewish parents. No loophole. And the first people to be prodded and pushed and hustled away to be those in the teaching professions—professors, lecturers, assistant lecturers (“like me, Sylvia”). Even part-time lecturers . . .

“So you see, Sylvia, it’s like I said to Fenella. I simply can’t go on. Not twice.”

One saw it clearly—oh, so clearly. But that mustn’t be admitted.

“That’s nonsense, Conrad. You can come to England—”

“No. Not now.”

“You can. Your father—”

“I’ve thought endlessly about my father. Endlessly. It’s because of that that I’m here tonight. I want you to tell my father what I’ve been telling you. He’ll understand. He’s a Jew like me—he knows what it’s been like. He’ll understand how one comes to a point when one just can’t do any more. I tried once. I thought it was all right. It wasn’t. Finis.”

Silence; an interval of pacing along these interminable Pincio roads. It was past midnight; the seats were deserted; the dance band at the Valadier had battered itself into silence; only the busts stood ranged on their pedestals like pale accusing ghosts or sleeping pigeons on their perches. A white fog was gathering round the Lago and in the valleys, and a black fog was gathering round Conrad and Sylvia. He has lost all heart; how can I restore him? It is dreadful, this; he is young, he is strong, he is fine, he has a mind attuned to the betterment of humanity and he has the talents to give it force; and he is utterly in despair. His hand, which I am still holding, is as limp and cold as if he were dead already. He will be dead—and soon—unless I can stop him, unless I can pull him back from this death-ridden borderland, unless I can turn him away from the deep waters . . . Well, I should be able to, I should know the way; I had to do it for myself not so very long ago, hadn’t I? Despair? I’ve known it.

“So you see, Sylvia, as I said at the start, there’s nothing else for it. Is there now?”

It was so long since he had spoken that he startled her; it was as if one of those cold busts crowded under the pine trees had opened its mouth in frigid final judgment. Her heart began to beat. “As I said at the start” . . . And we are where we started; I’ve done nothing; we are still face to face with death. Well—resolution!

. . . “Conrad, we can’t wander about here all night.”

He was instantly contrite.

“No, of course we can’t. I’m sorry. I’ve talked too long—and too much. I’ll take you home.”

“You won’t. You’ll take me to your flat.”

“But, Sylvia!—” (I’ve startled him again anyway; that’s something.) —“You can’t possibly come to my flat at this hour of the night.”

“Can’t I? Who says so? Mussolini?”

“No, but—Oh, well, you just can’t.”

“I’m coming anyway. Let’s find the topolino.”

“Oh, don’t be absurd. I’m not going to do—anything—tonight.”

“Nor any other night, my dear. All the same, I’m going to stand by. I’ve a lot to say to you yet.”

“But—Mrs. Tweed?”

“Damn Mrs. Tweed.”

“Damn Mrs. Tweed if you like. But—but—”

“But what? Don’t tell me it’s your good name we’ve got to think of.”

“Of course not. But there’s yours.”

“I’ll look after it. . . Come on, Conrad, the topolino.”

He stood for a minute helpless. Then he said, “The topolino anyway. But—to your hotel.”

“We’ll see when we get there. Come on, silly!”

She took his arm; and instantly there filtered through it a warm feeling of comfort; instantly there leapt up in Sylvia to greet this overture a warm feeling of relief. Whatever he says, he’s glad I’m coming, he’s glad. And that settles it.

“Come on, Conrad; the topolino!”

*  *  *

The embittered concierge had long since eaten his last onion and betaken himself to bed; the lift wasn’t working; the stairs were an endless echoing mountain. In the feeble electricity he switched on, Conrad’s flat was dismal with the dismalness of a neglected graveyard—as it was indeed the graveyard of that most pitiable of corpses, Hope. The ugly furniture snarled at one, the untended palm drooped miserably in its pot, Nero—or whoever he was—looked as if he had small-pox. Sylvia took one end of the hard uninviting sofa; Conrad the other.

“Have you a cigarette left, Conrad?”

Apologetically, he brought the box. “I haven’t any manners these days.”

“Bother manners!” . . . And now to talk and talk and talk; about something—anything—till the cows come home . . . “Conrad, what is going to happen to us all?”

“Us all?”

“Our generation. Yours and mine. Young people generally.”

“Presumably we’ll all be killed. The lucky ones anyway.”

“Yet you keep saying there won’t be a war?”

“Oh, not this time. But the next one. This year, next year, some time. Face it, Sylvia.”

“I won’t face it. It’s rot. I’m working for a peace organisation, as you know; you’d be surprised if you knew the enormous volume of opinion that wants peace.”

“I wouldn’t be in the least surprised. But it doesn’t outweigh the other thing—yet. War will only stop when everyone—the rank and file, I mean—simply says, ‘To hell with this—we’re not going to fight.’ We haven’t got quite that length yet, though we’re near it. The next generation may get to it—if there is a next generation.”

“And then you get—Communism.”

“Yes. Communism and peace.”

“And the death of everything we live for.”

“Well, death is peace. The dead don’t fight.”

“No . . . Conrad, do you believe in a future life?”

“Sometimes; sometimes not.”

“Well—I don’t. And that’s why I’m not in a hurry to give up this one.” He smiled, but he shook his head. “Let’s try to make it better instead.”

“How can I make mine better? How can I?” His hands—those thin firm sensitive hands—began to beat together. “I’m a Jew, I’m cursed. I go here—‘get out’. I go there—‘get out.’ I go yonder—‘shift on somewhere else’. . . Verdammt Jude! Bloody Jew-boy! Conspuez! Oh, England? Yes, I know England’s open after a fashion. But for how long? Take my own subject—medicine. Do you mean to tell me your London doctors are waiting for me with open arms? When they’re all cutting each other’s throats already? And not only me but the hundreds of really clever Jewish doctors—cleverer than they are? I don’t believe it.”

“But, Conrad—”

“No, Sylvia. Your people in England may mean to be kind but you’ll simply have to put a stop to it somewhere. It’s common sense. Then where am I? On the run again. I suppose I’m a bad Jew; I ought to be ready, as my ancestors were ready, to be chased from pillar to post and back again all over Europe. Well, I’m not. I was born and brought up into an expectation of a life that would allow me to work as I wanted and where I wanted, to do some good perhaps, advance knowledge a little, at the worst and lowest to interest myself. If I can’t have that—and I can’t have it, that’s clear now—then I don’t go on. Isn’t that sense?”

It was sense; you couldn’t deny it. How then to prove it nonsense?

“You don’t suppose, Sylvia—you can’t be so old-fashioned as to suppose—that to kill himself a man must necessarily be insane?”

“No, of course not. But he may be a lot of other things, Conrad. He may be short-sighted, cowardly, peevish, selfish—quite a lot of nasty things.”

“You can say so. And I can say he’s foreseeing, courageous, philosophical. We could argue it for ever.”

We could—and get no further. So I must play a card I didn’t mean to play.

“My father shot himself, Conrad. Three months ago.”

He was instantly shocked and startled.

“But, Sylvia! . . . Oh, good God, why didn’t you tell me that sooner? You’ve let me go on talking and talking about suicide and all the time—”

“I let you go on talking because, you see, it’s a subject I know something about at first hand.”

“Sylvia! Why did he? Did you know?”

“Yes—unfortunately. Because he was disgraced. I won’t tell you how—perhaps it was a kind of disgrace that wouldn’t have been thought so much of in some places as in England. But he was found out and he just felt he couldn’t face it. And—this is the point—of course he was wrong. If he’d stuck it out, his friends would have rallied round him, they’d have comforted him, they’d have—”

“Ah! But where are my friends?”

“You have two good ones that I know of. Your father. Me.”

“Oh . . .” But she saw him gathering himself together reproaching himself; in a minute, if I don’t look out we’ll be turning back towards politeness; that mustn’t happen. He said, “We mustn’t discuss the subject any more. You should have told me. If I’d known—”

“We just must discuss it—until you see it straight and give up this silly idea. Really, Conrad, you’re wrong—” She began a laboured exposition—not over-successfully inspired; in the middle of it a melodious little clock on the mantelpiece struck two. Two a.m.—the old hopeless hour when the demons gather; how can I impart life and hope into anyone at such a time; how can I find words that aren’t flat, thoughts that aren’t platitudes, ideas that aren’t as tired as I am? Well, I can go on talking anyway, I can play out time. “I’ve blandandhered thim through the night somehow”; come on, Mulvaney! On and on.

. . . “Your father, Conrad. Axey.”

“My father will understand better than anyone.”

“He’d understand. But it’s going to kill him. I don’t think you can do that, Conrad. My idea of morals is that we can do anything we like so long as it doesn’t hurt others. And specially those others we’re responsible for. In a way you’re responsible for Axey. He’s failed in his life—not his fault, just bad luck, but he’s failed. He’s going to die some time not very far away, he’s only got you.” On and on; drawing now a highly-coloured two-in-the-morning picture of Axey—talking of, thinking of, living for, fearing for “My-son-Conerat.” Conrad, listening, began to bite his fingers; am I perhaps getting him just a little? Slosh on the sentiment, slosh it on with a tar-brush . . . The melodious clock said ‘ half-past; two’ . . . Oh, dear, I’m tired!

He said at last, as one recovering from concussion or drunkenness, “Why on earth are we sitting here?”

“You’re sitting here because you haven’t the sense to go to bed. I’m sitting here because I think you want me.”

His hand slid along the hard surface of the sofa and came to rest on hers.

“Oh God! I do! . . . You know, Sylvia, I believe you are a friend.”

“I’m a friend, Conrad. Or anything else you want me to be. Just say.”

His eyes studied hers—still distant, distant, but with something coming to life at the back of them. You couldn’t call it hope, still less resurrection, but it was at least gropingly alive. It moved, it flickered, it advanced, receded, flamed.

“I shan’t forget this night, Sylvia.”

Nor I! Nor I!

“The last time you came I was rather nasty to you.”

“You thought I was a nuisance. You don’t think so now.”

“I don’t! My God, I don’t!”

“You put me off last time with the Foro Mussolini. You wanted to get rid of me.”

“The Foro Mussolini!”

“Yes; and your Abyssinian pictures . . . Oh, Conrad!”

For at the chance words “Abyssinian pictures”—unpremeditated, unpromising, a fortuitous something said to keep from yawning or falling off the sofa—suddenly at these words, these lucky God-sent words, crash! Suddenly the wall fell, the stoppage broke, the jam gave way. His face crumpled into complete ruin, his mouth went down, the tears burst from his eyes. He cried out something that might have been, “My work! My work!” and pitched forward face downwards into her lap. His head went into the soft valley of her thighs; his tears soaked into her black skirt; motionless and rigid, he cried and cried and cried . . .

She put a hand on his head, stroking it; but he didn’t feel. She said, “Stay there, Conrad!” but he didn’t hear . . . The bomb’s exploded at last; all over, all over; we’ve won.

Stay there, Conrad . . . “I’ve blandandhered thim through the night somehow”. . . Stay there; stay.

*  *  *

Ever afterwards there was to Sylvia something unreal about the remainder of that night. It was a background in pale blue or pale grey; the voice of a clock; the feel of smooth silk; the faint taste of one’s own tongue. It was not time, it was hardly experience; it was a passage, an interval . . . For half an hour—an hour, perhaps, but why talk of measures in the infinite?—Conrad’s shoulders heaved with sobs that grew less and less violent till they merged into the long slow breaths of sleep. He slept with the soundless tranquillity of an infant; dead-beat, played-out; it was more like a coma. She gave up stroking his head; cautiously she took off her hat and then sat with her hands in her lap close to Conrad’s buried face, staring, staring. Here I sit, thought Sylvia, five stories up in a pinkish-yellow house in the Via Sallustiana; nobody knows I am here; I am remote as a star and it might go on for ever . . . And no doubt the night porter at the Lombardia is thinking the worst.

If only I could switch off the light. But I daren’t move. Not yet.

Thinking, thinking, thinking. Cesar Savage . . . Gribbie . . . Humbug Hall . . . Quashy wandering in the night . . . Rule and the New Movement . . . Portia (“And what is Portia going to say about this?”) And Conrad, Conrad, Conrad. I have had some strange experiences, I’ve done some odd things, but I never had a man sleeping with his face in my lap before. I like it because it is Conrad. The weight of him is pressing me down, pressing me open, I am opening to him all over like a flower; now Conrad is marching into me as troops march into a surrendered city; he is marching along the streets of my veins and the cross-streets of my nerves; he is taking possession. His advance guard is in my heart; I will never get him out again . . . I would like so much to bend down and kiss his head; but I daren’t; not yet. . . If only I could get that beastly light out!

Now Sylvia, mobilise yourself, send out your own relief armies into Conrad. They too are marching into him whether I like it or not; Sylvia is flowing into Conrad; I do not even need to touch his hair; it is all going out of me—so smoothly, so sweetly! Sylvia is becoming Conrad, Conrad is becoming Sylvia. My-son-Conerat. When we wake, we shall be two quite different people. Nonsense! we shan’t be two people at all; we shall be a composite. I will never get him out again; he will never get me out again. Blent! I shall like it, I will make him like it. March on, Conrad; flow on, Sylvia . . . Oh, damn that light!

. . . The melodious clock said ‘four’. Perhaps she had been asleep, perhaps unconscious. At any rate she could bear the cramped position, the crushing weight, no longer. With infinite caution she put her two hands, cup-wise, under Conrad’s head; his face was warm, her hands were cold, she warmed them a little under her skirt. Fraction by fraction, holding up his head, she edged her right leg towards her left; he didn’t wake. Cramp seized her suddenly like a knife; she fought it off; still he didn’t wake. Her leg was free at last, his face rested in her hands. The clock said ‘half past four’. Cautiously again she reached out for a cushion, holding his face up with one hand under his chin. A second cushion; now down very gently, very very gently; done! He hadn’t wakened. She edged herself to her feet; her legs, stiff and lifeless as boards, gave way under her, she had to cling to the table. The infernal light went out at last; through the chink of the window-curtains, in came the Roman day . . . She tottered into Conrad’s bedroom dropped on his bed, kicked off her shoes, slept . . .

. . . A shrieking telephone in her ear; a voice that suggested onions saying through it, “Le sette, signor; le sette.” Where am I? . . . In Conrad’s flat, on Conrad’s bed, and the concierge is calling him—as usual, no doubt—to tell him it is seven o’clock. Say “Grazie!” into the telephone in a nice thick, sleepy, non-committal voice and put the thing down. And get up, Sylvia, and get on with this merry day. “Here hath been, dawning another blue”. . . I feel stiff and rather sick—comes of sleeping in one’s belt; I might at least have had the sense to undo my suspenders . . . Is Conrad still sleeping? Yes, thank God, like the dead. Could I risk a bath? No; too noisy. But tea I must and will have; I must find some somewhere. Up, Sylvia; rub the Pincio dust off these shoes; up and get on with it.

Seven o’clock, eh? In half an hour’s time I must ring Portia. But tea first.

What a night! As Cesar used to say. Wha-at a night!

The tea was easily found—in a cupboard in the tiny kitchenette; there was a choice of electric kettles. Nothing could be simpler, pleasanter, more comfortingly domestic.

But as Sylvia measured her tea and filled her kettle, her hands shook and—despite the stuffiness of the flat—the goose-flesh crept upon her back. For in the cupboard, with the tea and the butter and the condiments and the four bottles of Peroni, there had been something quite different. On the second top shelf—black as night, ugly as sin—there had lain a fat revolver; it wasn’t loaded, but it was cushioned on a closed envelope addressed to “Signor Fenella” at the University City. “A friend of mine, Fenella—a Jew like myself”; he who brought in that copy of the Fiume with its fatal list of Jewish doctors. “My friend Fenella”. . .

So we were as near to it as that, were we? As near to it as that?

XV

At seven-thirty—Conrad being still asleep—Sylvia rang the Hotel Lombardia. There was an indubitable note of interest in the voice of the concierge who replied. (“So they’ve missed me all right.”) Then came Portia.

“What’s the matter, Sylvia? Aren’t you well or something?”

(She thinks I’m telephoning from my room.) “I’m quite well. But I’m telephoning from Conrad’s flat.”

“From Conrad’s flat!”

“Yes. Via Sallustiana.”

“But—what on earth are you doing there so early?”

“It’s not so much early as late. I’ve been there all night.”

“Sylvia!”

“No, no—it’s not that. But—he came to see me last night and I couldn’t leave him. He was—well, he was desperate.”

“Desperate? What about?”

Oh, Lord, Portia, do you never see anything but your own silly affairs? “About the Decrees.”

“Oh . . . But that doesn’t seem a sufficient reason—”

“It seemed so to him. If I hadn’t stayed with him last night he’d have—well, I think he’d have killed himself. In fact, I know he would.”

“I don’t suppose he would for a moment.” (Suppose what you like, my dear—he won’t now; that’s the main thing.) “I think you’ve been behaving very foolishly . . . Well, hurry round now.”

“I can’t.”

“What?”

“I can’t—just for a little. He’s asleep at last—he’s only been asleep for a couple of hours. I can’t come away till he wakes. Even then I’ll have to see to him. I’ll come the moment I can.”

There was a little silence at the other end; then something sotto voce about “extraordinary”. “I think it’s very inconsiderate of you, Sylvia; you know we have a great deal to do today.” (Yes, a great deal of nothing.) “You know we have to revise and check my Vienna letters—”

Your Vienna letters! And Conrad swithering between life and death. You’re enough to drive anyone mad. But conciliate—conciliate.

“I know; I’m sorry. I’ll come at the very first possible moment. But I can’t leave him just yet. I can’t. If you saw him you’d understand.”

A pause; second thoughts, apparently. “Would you like me to come round to you?”

“Oh, no—no thanks. Don’t think of it. We’re through the worst now. But I want to strike when the iron’s hot. I must get him his ticket—get him out of Rome.”

“I suppose”—doubtfully—“I suppose you’re doing right.”

“I’m sure I am. After all, he’s Axey’s son. For Axey’s sake—” For Axey’s sake! Don’t make me laugh!

“There’s that, of course.”—still doubtfully. “But I hardly see why—Oh, well . . .”

The conversation petered out.

Conrad slept till ten; Sylvia, sprawling in a hard Milano armchair, dozed a little in sympathy. I shall know this flat, she thought, before I’m done with it—that plant, that beastly tinkling musical-box clock, the German pattern on the wallpaper; as for Nero, he’ll become a part of my dreams. She half expected someone to appear with breakfast or to do the rooms but apparently this was no part of the routine for the musty silence drowsed on undisturbed. Perhaps Conrad made his own breakfast—perhaps he didn’t have any. On an impulse she opened the outer door at last and found milk and fresh rolls on the mat. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she went in search of coffee. In that cupboard, in that cupboard with—the thing . . .

He woke in the end with a start, raising himself sharply and rigidly on his hands, staring round. She said, “It’s all right, Conrad. Have some coffee.”

He passed a hand over his face which was grotesquely marked all down one side by the pattern from the cushion.

“Good God! I didn’t remember at first—”

“Well, don’t remember. Have some coffee . . .”

“But, Sylvia; you haven’t been here all night?”

“Where else? It was all right—I slept in your bed. Have some coffee.”

“It was inexcusable of me.”

“Absolutely.”

His face broke into a smile. The first real smile I have ever seen there; it is a charming smile; I knew it would be if we could only get at it.

“Mrs. Tweed?”

“It’s all right. She knows. I rang her up hours ago.” “What time is it?”

The clock answered him; tinkle, tinkle, tinkle. Ten o’clock.

“Good God! It’s ten . . . Sylvia!”

“Yes.”

“I feel better.”

“Of course you do.”

“It’s thanks to you.”

“Partly. But anybody else would have done just as well.”

“Sylvia! Anybody else wouldn’t . . . Are you getting anything to eat?”

“Heaps. Drink your coffee . . . Conrad, before we forget all about it and never speak of it again, I found some things in the kitchen cupboard—”

He sprang up white-faced from the sofa.

“I never meant anybody to find these.”

“Not even Fenella?”

“Well, yes—Fenella . . . Where are they now?”

“Here.” She brought them out of the pocket of her coat. “Tear up that letter, Conrad.” He stared at her for a moment; then took the letter and tore it into minute pieces. “I’ll keep this thing for you.”

He smiled again—broadly, sunnily.

“You can if you like. I shan’t want it. Not now.” He bent over suddenly and kissed her cheek. This is a new Conrad; thank God, thank God for that! “You know why, what’s more.”

“Perhaps I do.” But she was suddenly shy. “Drink up your coffee, Conrad. Then you’d better go and get shaved; we’ve got to go out.”

“Out? Where to?”

“Heavens! You can’t want to stay here.” She shuddered violently. “Anyway we’ve got to get your ticket to England.”

“I’m not going to England.”

“Yes you are. Tonight.”

“My dear Sylvia—”

“My dear Conrad! You are. You’ve given me a hell of a lot of trouble. Quite likely you’ve lost me my job. Portia’s ramping to start for Vienna—”

“Well? Start. Go ahead.”

“I don’t leave Rome till you do. Take that as settled.”

“But—the flat? My car?”

“There must be ways of fixing up all that. If you want money, I’ve got tons.” (So I have; all that I drew for the great Continental escape.) “All that’s easy. You’ve only got to make up your mind to it . . . Damn it, Conrad, it’s the least you can do . . .”

They wrangled for a while but in the end he went off to the bathroom to shave; she heard him singing—of all things on earth, Giovanezza. In the dim depths of the over-mantel mirror she did what she could with her hair; it was little enough. I look appalling; again that’s no matter. Thank God women don’t grow beards; he was quite black. I’ll pass. She counted her money; enough for a second-class to London with sleeper. So—Thomas Cook’s.

He was ready in a quarter of an hour—shaved and in a good grey suit. Again the new Conrad—almost frightening; so relaxed, so easy, so alive.

“Come on, Conrad, let’s get on with it.”

“I’m going to kiss you first.” Indeed the new Conrad!

“I’d rather you waited.”

“I’d rather I didn’t.”

He put his arms round her, he kissed her lips. A long kiss. It began gently but it grew, it warmed up; crescendo, crescendo! There! And I suppose that’s the first and last kiss he’ll ever give me. Because of course I’m not going to England. But don’t tell him that.

“Another, Sylvia?”

“No, Conrad. Thomas Cook’s.”

The Vittorio Veneto was a glen of morning sunshine; at the newspaper kiosk at the corner the Giornale’s headlines were reassuring. “September 21st . . . Chamberlain . . . peace . . . The Czechs have been told to accept.” Things are better all round. There won’t be a war. Conrad will get safely to England. Portia and I will go to Vienna. I will stay in Vienna. I might be in a worse place . . . She pushed Conrad into Cook’s office; “I’m going to trust you; you don’t want me standing over you. Don’t be too long.” Outside she sat down on the low wall and stared at the traffic and the posters. Three enormous red motor-coaches were collecting their parties for a giro della citta; there were English there, French, a number of Germans. All going, in the friendliest possible way, to gape together at the Popes’ heads in San Paulo Fuori or share candles in the catacombs or help each other up the ladder stairs in St. Peter’s. In ten days they’ll all be killing each other? Bosh! It won’t happen . . . Up and down the Vittorio Veneto ran the sleek Fiats and Americani. A poster stared at her, a familiar one. “Lotteria di Merano. La fortuna è di chi la prendera.” Well, I snatched mine last night. What next?

Conrad came out, a little green book of tickets in his hand.

“It’s tomorrow morning. Ten-fifty. The espresso.”

“Couldn’t you get a train tonight?”

“You are in a hurry to get rid of me.”

“I’ve got to get back to my job. And right now, what’s more.”

His face fell suddenly, comically; she saw that for the first time he realised what was happening. Queer, how it took men such a time!

“But—but, Sylvia. I’m going to see you again? Before I go.”

“I’ll try.”

“Try! Try!” He became tremendously agitated. “But I must.”

“Very well, I will.” (I must, too.)

“This evening?”

“Yes. I think so. After tea. Say five.”

“All right, then.” He gave directions for meeting. “When will you reach England?”

Sylvia found her hands clenching; she bit her lip. Hard.

“I can’t be definite. It depends on Portia—Mrs. Tweed. But we shouldn’t be more than a few days in Vienna.”

“And then you’ll come straight through?”

“So far as I know. I don’t think she’ll go to Prague; not now.”

“Surely not . . . Then by the end of the month anyway?”

“I should think so, Conrad.”

I should think not! Where shall I be by the end of the month? If there’s a war, I shall probably be interned. And if not? Wiener-Neustadt, probably, or Amstetten or Linz. Board in return for English conversation. Pfui! “La fortuna è di chi la prendera.” No doubt, no doubt, but—one can’t always say “Grab!” Not when your father killed himself because of—that. Not when you have a Prep School Games Master hunting after you like a bloodhound. I won’t go back to England; never. I couldn’t explain Basil to Conrad, still less Conrad to Basil. La fortuna? No; too difficult; it’s all beyond me. “Grab”? No; can’t make it.

*  *  *

They met in the Barberini at ten past five. Sylvia was a little late—Portia, though not exactly cross, had required delicate handling all day; from afar she saw Conrad sitting at the little trattoria table, staring wildly and anxiously at the passers-by. He jumped up at sight of her.

“Sylvia, I thought you weren’t coming.”

“You ought to have been more trustful. Here I am.”

“Sylvia, you’ll always come?”

Sylvia thought, My goodness! this is speeding-up with a vengeance; the new Conrad goes ahead. She said,

“Always is a very long word. Where are we going?”

“We ought to go to the Foro Mussolini. This time.”

“It’s a terribly long way.”

“That’s why I want to go there.”

“I think I’d rather go to San Pietro. I know what the Foro Mussolini’s like—I’ve seen pictures. Rows of gigantic marble behinds. Muscles, muscles, muscles.”

“All right, we’ll get a taxi.”

“Taxi? Where’s the topolino?”

“I sold it this morning.”

Sylvia drew a breath of relief; so he means it; he doesn’t shilly-shally; I like him for that.

It was quite a considerable taxi ride even to St. Peter’s—down the Tritone, across the Corso, through a maze of small streets to the Ponte Umberto with its flood dykes, past the great desecrated plinth of Hadrian’s Tomb. St. Peter’s was a vast dusk, faintly echoing, faintly cool after the outside heat; its floor was spacious as a desert, its dome was high as heaven. Conrad said, “Why on earth did you want to come here?”

“Because I like it. I like anything that’s big—enormously big—and in proportion. And I used to come here with someone I loved very much.”

“Oh?”

“My father. I told you.”

“I remember . . . Let’s go up the Dome.”

“I’ll go up as far as the lift goes. I’m not going to scramble up all these stairs. I didn’t sleep half the night.”

He said contritely, “You must be dead beat. Was Mrs. Tweed very furious?”

“I can’t imagine her furious. Her method of dealing with tired people is to work them double. It’s effective for a time. But I do feel done up now.”

“How much did you tell her?”

“No more than I need. She believes me, I’ll say that.”

“If she can believe in universal peace and the united effort of woman she can believe anything.”

“Oh, she’s not so bad. She has her troubles. Conrad, does she matter? Let this just be you and me . . .”

The lift decanted them on the flat roof of the nave; they walked to the edge and looked down over the frontage to the vast Piazza with its arcs of double columns. Down there in these magnificent distances people and vehicles moved like ants. It was getting dusk; already the big lights opposite the Palazzo Venezia were springing up and there was a subdued glow down to the left behind the vast bulwarks of the Vatican City.

“Conrad. . . About this war. . . Do you feel frightened?”

“I feel more frightened than I did last night.”

“Because things matter now. Of course; I see that . . . You know, I don’t. It’s not that I’m specially brave or anything; I just don’t care. I don’t care what happens to me.”

“I care.” He put an arm round her waist; she let it stay there. “Sylvia, when you get back to England, could we get married, do you think?”

Sylvia thought, Who said speeding-up! ‘Faster! Faster!’ The Red Queen wasn’t in it. Oh, God, how I hate myself! For I’m playing a trick on him, I’m cheating him. It’s low of me, I ought to be shot. But what else can I do? If I tell him the truth, he’ll tear up his ticket; he’ll probably even want to come on to Vienna. She said slowly, “Aren’t we going a bit fast, Conrad?”

His arm tightened, “We have to, Sylvia darling; things are going so fast all round. In my father’s time people could get engaged for seven years and count on coming through them; now you can’t count on seven weeks.”

“Oh, Conrad, surely!”

“Say months, then . . . So you see we have to move fast. And we have moved fast, haven’t we, already, you and I? Since that night we went to the Campidoglio—”

“We’ve moved fast all right, Conrad. Oughtn’t we to pause for a bit?”

“I don’t see it. If I believed in a God I’d say he’d deliberately taken us up these last few days and hustled us along. Just to make sure we didn’t waste any time. It’s as if he said, ‘You haven’t too much time left; get on with it.’”

“God must have a lot more to do these days.”

“Maybe; but we haven’t. There can’t be anything more important for us to do than to get on with ourselves. With Conrad-and-Sylvia. You see, if you said you’d agree, I could be starting arrangements the moment I get to England. I could be looking out for a practice—”

“Mister Eager!”

“Well, I am! After last night I know what you are. I know you’re splendid and brave and absolutely a friend and—”

“Conrad! Conrad!” She put a hand over his mouth; he closed his spare hand over it and kept it there.

“Well, you are. I’m in love with you already. Every time I see you I’ll be ten times more; so when I’ve seen you a hundred times it’ll be a thousand times as much and when I’ve seen you a thousand times, it’ll be—”

She drew her hand away. . . . “I know you think so.” . . . (And perhaps I think so too. I want you, Conrad and I don’t want you. I would like a long time—weeks, months—to sort myself out. And then there’s Basil--; and the other things. Too difficult; we’d better forget each other. But you mustn’t get an inkling of that—not an inkling.) “Think again, Conrad; we don’t know each other at all. We’ve hardly seen each other. We—”

“Is it because I’m a Jew?”

“Of course not!” If this was all real, I’d have to think about that, too; as things are it can go hang. “You must know that well enough by now. But—what’s the sense in rushing things so? We must take time to turn round; I want time if you don’t . . .” We must take time, we don’t know each other, we can’t rush things; on and on and on—these stale deliberate platitudes, these beastly lies.

“It is because I’m a Jew.”

“Conrad, if you say that again, I’ll throw myself over St. Peter’s. It is not that, whatever it is . . . But—” Yes, but—but—but; a stream of false caution, of sham hesitation, of mock modesty; it must disgust him; I can’t help it. “Wait till I get back to England, Conrad; we’ll see about it all then.”

“And that will be by the end of this month?”

“It’s bound to be, isn’t it? I must go where Mrs. Tweed goes, mustn’t I?”

“You sound almost as if you wished you wouldn’t.

“I sound half-asleep. I hardly know what I’m saying.”

“I ought to come to Vienna with you. If it was any other place, any other place on earth—”

“Well, you can’t.” No, thank God, you can’t do that; I shall vanish yet; I shall vanish from you all. ‘Who is Sylvia, where is she?’ You’ll none of you find out.

“Leave it to England, Conrad . . . And let me go home now. Please. Like a dear.”

“I’m going to kiss you first.”

“Well . . . Get on with it.”

“Kiss me back, Sylvia.”

“I—I’m trying to.” (God help me, I’m trying not to! If I did, we’d never leave Rome.) “And, Conrad—”

“Yes?”

“I can’t come to the station tomorrow. Promise me, swear to me, you’ll really go.”

“Of course I’ll go. I’ll go straight to my father. To Elding. And you’ll come as soon as you can?”

“Y-yes.”

“You want to, Sylvia?”

“I want to all right.”

And so down in the lift with its grumpy attendant and across the Piazza and into a taxi and through the mean streets and up the Tritone and home. And so ends that.

But, taking off her hat in the Lombardia, tidying her hair for her before-dinner session with Portia and the Concords, Sylvia thought, Those were bad lies you told this evening; really wicked lies; bad. If God doesn’t punish you for lies like those, you’ll be a lucky girl. Oh, you will!

XVI

Thursday the twenty-second September nineteen-thirty-eight. Mr. Chamberlain is flying to Godesberg with the new Anglo-French proposals;

Conrad is flying to Elding on the ten-fifty express. Things are better all round. Even the Lombardia’s manager—both eyes on his tourist traffic—says now there won’t be a war. A lull, a lull, a respite.

It was another morning of hazy sunshine, the prelude to another blazing day; all Rome seemed to be enjoying it—except Portia. There was something the matter with Portia that morning, she was pale and frowning. She had been manifestly upset by her morning letters—so upset that for once she failed to complain about the coffee at breakfast, forgot for once to say, “Haven’t you any other jam but apricot?”—as if they ever would have. So upset that she was actually driven to make a confidante of Sylvia.

“I’ve had a very worrying letter from Hambling, Sylvia. From my husband.”

Sylvia thought, “Aha! Re-enter the Bearded Lady. Just as things were beginning to look up a little, here he comes. A good thing it wasn’t yesterday—I wouldn’t have had time for him yesterday.” She said something politely enquiring.

“I can’t think what he means.”

“Doesn’t he say?”

“He doesn’t say anything very intelligible.” She pulled a blue envelope from her handbag; the rich Humbug Hall handmade note-paper—strange to see it again. (They’re all going on with their lives there, Pringle, Quashy, Rule—no, Rule’s in Tangier.) “Perhaps I’d better read it to you; you may be able to make some suggestion. He says, ‘I’ve had a little bit of trouble with the Unemployed’”—

“The unemployed?”

“He means the Police. He always calls the Police the Unemployed. So they are very largely—lying in wait for motorists and leading school children over crossings. ‘A little bit of trouble with the Unemployed. They came round yesterday full of questions. Heavy of hoof and hand. Don’t worry about it.’ Isn’t that characteristic of him! He says the Police have been round asking questions and he doesn’t give me the slightest idea what about. And he tells me not to worry. And here I am in Italy, hundreds of miles away—”

Sylvia thought rapidly, It must be bad, we must be going to hear more about this or he’d never have mentioned it at all. Whatever the Police questions were, he couldn’t answer them.

“What can it be, Sylvia?”

Sylvia thought again, Obviously some woman. Hyde Park? Or he’s tried on his games and the woman’s gone to the Police. And serve him right. But I can’t very well say that to Portia.

“Probably it’s nothing at all. Something to do with the car, perhaps. He may have had an accident.”

“Then why doesn’t he say so?”

Yes, why indeed? “Because he doesn’t think it worth bothering about.” But she thought, What a hope! There are three possible reasons—(a) because he hopes to wriggle out of it yet, (b) because it’s too bad to tell, (c) because he knows this uncertainty will hurt you most. And indeed Portia’s drawn and anxious face would have melted a stone. She said without much conviction,

“I hope you may be right. I do think he might have been more explicit . . . Now I don’t know whether to go on to Vienna or not. If it’s serious, perhaps I ought to go home at once.”

“I doubt if it’s as serious as all that.” (That’s what she wants me to say.)

“Probably not. Still . . .” She put the letter back in her handbag. “I suppose we may as well go on. After all, Vienna’s on the way home; in a sense . . . Well, come along, Sylvia, we mustn’t let this interfere with our work, must we?”

To do her justice, thought Sylvia—struggling all day with Umbertoli’s successor and an impossible effusion from a pro-Jewish Society in Kiev—to do her justice, she certainly doesn’t.

*  *  *

At mid-day Sylvia too had a letter, addressed in a fine neat unfamiliar handwriting; a yellow Italian stamp. She ripped it open. “Via Sallustiana 147-4.” Of course; Conrad.

“Darling Sylvia, I am starting in ten minutes as I promised and this will be the last letter I shall write in Rome. And the first letter I write in London, it will be to you also. And it will be about the same thing as this—that I love you and I can’t live without you and I want you to marry me. You said you wanted to think about it; well, do think about it because I am sure that the more you think about it the more you will see that you must.

“Don’t think it’s only because you have been a salvation to me in this horrible place. That too—and I shall never never forget it. But apart altogether from that, I think—oh, I know—you are the finest creature I have ever met and I do not want any life ever again that has not you in it always, dearest Sylvia.

“Now, Sylvia, if you go to Vienna and if you can find the time there, will you do something for me? Will you try to find an old friend of mine—Moritz Lippmann—and see if he is getting on all right or if they have done anything horrible to him? He lives at Hans Kraeger Strasse 14, in the Leopoldstadt district. He is of course a Jew like myself. I only want to know if he is well. Don’t bother about it if it becomes difficult.

“All my love, darling Sylvia. Your Conrad.”

Putting down the letter after a second reading, Sylvia experienced a curious feeling of disappointment. Asking herself “Why?” she answered herself, “It’s because of that bit about Lippmann.” Was it just because of the Lippmann bit that he wrote at all? . . . Now, Sylvia, don’t be unreasonable; it’ll be something to do in Vienna; it’ll be something to do for Conrad . . . But—why didn’t he ask me himself instead of writing it? At St. Peter’s; he could have done it then. Was it because he was afraid I would ask questions? Oh, nonsense! Really, Sylvia, you’re an idiot. Of course it was just an afterthought. Of course.

And apart from the Lippmann bit, it was a nice letter to get, wasn’t it?

*  *  *

Friday twenty-third September, nineteen-thirty-eight. Here we go up-up-up; and here we go down-down-down. Godesberg has failed; Chamberlain is going home again empty-handed. Hitler says, “October First”. Mussolini says, “Plebisciti! Plebisciti! Plebisciti!” The lions and tigers are roaring again from the house-tops; brazen-mouthed, crackling with electric fury, they are spreading again that scarlet war-drum din. People are stopping to listen to them, crowding round the cafés holding up the traffic in the Piazza Venezia; long-faced, serious-looking people. Mussolini says and says—-nothing fatal but nothing helpful; and the press runs shrieking after him with half-inch headlines. “Italy has taken her stand.” “Du-ce! Du-ce! Du-CE!”

But Conrad is in Paris this morning; he is crossing now from the Midi to the Nord. I can see him sitting in a yellow taxi—an open taxi—looking about him happily; no strain on his face, no Axey in his eyes. He is thinking, “Soon I will see Sylvia.” But he won’t—unless something very extraordinary happens . . . If there’s a war, oughtn’t I to go home after all? Drive a lorry or an ambulance, do first aid, train as an Air Warden? If there’s a war . . . I would see Conrad . . .

Roar! Roar! from the loud-speakers. Gr-r-r-r! Keep telling yourself it sounds much worse than it is. Just the College Yell. If only one knew . . .

There was another letter from Pelham Tweed that morning. Miserable, apprehensive, unsettled, Sylvia felt that here at any rate there must be no secrets, no uncertainty. Portia was uncommunicative; Sylvia took the desperate step of asking her. With foolish flippancy she said,

“Is there anything fresh from the front?”

Portia’s brows contracted. “The front? Oh, you mean Hambling. No; he only says ‘The Unemployed were back again. I have soothed them with libations and burnt offerings.’ It seems to be blowing over.”

The silly little ass! thought Sylvia, the silly posing little ass! Why can’t he say what it is? She felt a sudden hysterical desire to shriek. If only one knew!

“That’s all he says?”

“That’s all. I don’t think I need do anything . . .”

But the day darkened. They went in the afternoon to the reception at the palace of the Duchessa Montrini; it should have been an assembly of the arts, but it turned itself into a whispering gallery of the news. No sense could be made of it; everyone had inside information; everyone’s inside information was different. The Czechs would fight to the last—“King Wenceslas”, “lands we have owned since 989”; the Czechs would certainly cave in—“in the name of common sense, Signore, what else can they do?” Hitler was bluffing; nothing would stand between Hitler and the Sudeten Deutschland—“niente, niente, non modo una guerra internazionale!” The King had refused to order mobilisation; Mussolini didn’t give a damn for the King. The Embassies were laughing at the whole thing; the Embassies were evacuating their women and children and unessential staffs. The British correspondents were optimistic; the British correspondents had received instructions to get their passports for Prague. Italy would be neutral; Italy would join Germany at once; Italy would do this, that and the other thing. Mussolini told Ciano . . . Ciano told Perth . . . Alfieri. . . Pariani . . . I heard . . . I heard . . . I heard.

Yes, the day darkened. It darkened so heavily against its background of Roman sunshine and Grape Festivals and Altars of Peace that on the way home Portia, white-faced and distrait, stopped the taxi at a telegraph office.

“I think I really must try to find out something, Sylvia. I mean about Hambling.” She scribbled for a minute on the little block she always carried. “Do run in and send this telegram to my husband.”

Waiting in the busy telegraph office, hot and uncomfortable and with her shoes hurting her feet, Sylvia studied Portia’s telegram. It was a request for information to be wired to Vienna. And suddenly, as in a vision she saw the Bearded Lady receiving it, reading it with one of his little sneering looks, turning up his straight little nose, curling his beautiful little mouth over that silky—ugh!—beard. And dropping the telegram into the wastepaper basket and doing nothing at all. If he wouldn’t tell in his letters, if he hadn’t the common humanity to put his wife out of her misery by post, was he likely to respond to a telegram? Not he! . . . And then, turning away from the counter, she had an inspiration; she turned back to it, seized a fresh form, scribbled hastily.

“Pringle, Hambling Hall, Herts, England. What has really happened. Wire reply Hotel Siegfried Vienna. Savage.”

Outside in the taxi Portia was impatient.

“You’ve been a terrible time . . . How much was it?”

“Thirty-five lire.”

Portia fumbled in her bag for the money. “Well, it shouldn’t be wasted. It ought to bring us something.”

We shall see, thought Sylvia, we shall see.

It was twenty minutes past six when they reached the Lombardia. An hour ago, an hour ago exactly, Conrad arrived at Victoria. I wonder if he had a good crossing; I wonder if he was sick. I wonder if Axey came to meet him. I wonder . . .

XVII

Vienna appeared as a smoke-coloured button on the drab cloth of the Danube plain; it was there before you were ready for it. Looking down at it from eight thousand feet—as Sylvia had never done before—you thought “that is far too small to be Vienna”; then, as the plane descended, bumping heavily on the air currents above the river, it grew to spired and smoke; wreathed dimensions. Wien, Wien, du list so schön.* Then the plane swung away eastwards towards Aspern and on Sylvia’s side at least you lost sight of it.

Sylvia, in her black coat and skirt, sat limp in her seat; she had been thinking, most of the forenoon, If this plane were to crash it wouldn’t be a bad thing at all. I think I would be quite pleased myself; I have nothing to look forward to, nowhere to go, I am faced by hideous complications—finding some sort of livelihood, dodging Basil, letting Conrad discover that I am a liar and a cheat. The War news that morning—what there was of it—had been bad; Hitler’s Godesberg demands were impossible, the Czechs couldn’t possibly accept them; Chamberlain saw as much—he was throwing in his hand, getting together with the French ministers. At Godesberg Hitler had reached fraktur sprechen in earnest. Mussolini’s contribution was to roar through all the newspaper headlines, “Abbiamo essatamente sei giorni”; no doubt he would soon be roaring it through a thousand loud speakers. Exactly six days left . . . But Mussolini isn’t mobilising anyone; Italy’s a lake of non-combatancy. Has he a game on, has he something up his sleeve? At the Duchessa Montrini’s they hinted that he had—but then they hinted so many things . . . Taking it all in all it looks like war this Saturday morning; so if this plane were to crash . . .

Sylvia thought, looking round her, would it be any great loss? Not to me—or I think not. Immediately in front of her sat Portia, visible only to the extent of a rather jaunty little velvet hat and a patch of careful curls. Under that hat and in front of those curls was a distracted brain worrying terribly—about the failure of the Concord Crusade or at any rate its temporary eclipse, about the Bearded Lady and his trouble with the Unemployed, about her own immediate personal safety. For it can’t be disputed—we may as well face it—if Hitler fires his gun prematurely, we may have very considerable difficulty in getting out of Vienna. I could bear this plane to crash, thought Sylvia, and so perhaps could Portia; but neither of us would relish a couple of years or more in Dachau . . . There were six other passengers in the plane; two of them appeared to be the Foreign Office couriers, they wore black suits and little black fez-like hats with tassels. There was a rather pleasant-looking young man—ex-Austrian?—and a stout north-German commercial traveller who snored in his sleep. The remaining two were a magnificent cosmopolitan in a fur coat and his son, a rather pestering little boy of eight or nine. For the sake of that little boy, thought Sylvia, the plane mustn’t crash; and yet, and yet, might it not be as well for him too? Youth, doomed and manacled, walking to the precipice; sooner or later, over we must all go . . . Armageddon . . . this time, next time . . . Lord! I feel depressed this morning!

But the plane didn’t crash; instead it soared like a bird, riding the strong south wind over the Apennines, past Gubbio and Perugia, over one east-flowing river after another, till it sank to a curious pinkish town on a sand-spit which proved to be Venice. It rose again, high, high, it looked down upon grim mountains of earth and rock, it threw them behind with a sigh of relief and sped on over the old Austrian woods and hills—Tarvisio, the Mur, the Enns, Semmering. And so, swooping down, upon Aspern . . . There was a rush for the German papers.

“Any news? Anything happening?”

“No, no; nothing. All is quiet.”

Quiet I thought Sylvia, trundling into Vienna in the company’s bus, it is more than quiet, it is dead. The streets were deserted even allowing for a Saturday afternoon; nobody seemed to be shopping or strolling or going in and out. Per contra there were no troops, no guns, no tanks, no anti-aircraft, no war at all. The pleasant-looking young passenger leaned forward and proudly pointed out to Sylvia the fine new bridge over the Danube, as if everything were perfectly normal; the bus bumped along through deserted squares and minor streets drearily empty. Not a drum, not a bugle, not a bayonet glinting. At the Kärtnerring crossing the bus was held up at last by a long string of field artillery; a group of citizens, similarly arrested, stared at the procession with gloomy all-but-hostile faces. In the halt, while the artillery jingled by, there grew like a whiff of phosgene the faint sickly atmosphere of fear.

At the Hotel Siegfried there were some letters of no importance, no telegrams and—rather unexpectedly—Portia’s two Viennese correspondents. One of them—presumably Mr. Judson—was a bald spade-faced American with a middle-West accent, the other a little foxy Viennese with a pointed nose, red hair and freckles. The American seemed in a very bad temper.

“Wal—you made it? I’ll say you’ve a nerve.”

Portia for once looked a little helpless.

“You think we shouldn’t have come?”

“I’m not gonna say that. I only say you’ve got a nerve—comin’ here just when things are maybe breakin’ loose all round.”

The little Viennese said fussily, “No, no; wait for the Fuehrer’s speech.”

“If you’ll tell me what the Foohrer’s gonna say? Maybe it’ll be too late then.”

Portia said crossly, “It’s not too late now. What are we to do about it? What is the Crusade to do?” They stared at her, the American with ill-disguised contempt.

“Lady! That’s all off. Peace isn’t a proposition in this town just now.”

His companion said again—but without much conviction—“No, no. Wait and see what the Fuehrer says.”

Portia said crossly that there was such a thing as carrying out one’s plans.

“Oh, plans!” The American almost spat. “Whose plans? There’s only one guy whose plans count for coupla dimes here meantime and that’s Herr God; Almighty Hitler. And he won’t spill the beans till Monday night.”

The Viennese said, sticking to his guns—or his hope that there would be none, “You don’t know what he will say.”

“No, Rudi, and no more do you. But I can guess, an’ I’ll give guess number one that he says, ‘At this moment, friends, while I’m speakin’ to you, our grand boys are marchin’ into Czecho’. Member the Rhineland? And if he says that—well, up she goes!”

His colleague demurred. “He has not said that; he has said the first of October.” They wrangled for a minute. Portia turned rather helplessly to Sylvia, “What do you think we should do?”

Sylvia suggested that they might at least go to their rooms. “We can’t get out of here till Monday anyway; no planes on Sunday . . . And you’ll want Mr. Tweed’s reply to your telegram.” (And I want Pringle’s to mine.)

Portia seemed to agree but in a deflated non-Portia way; she turned away with the American to interview the hotel manager. The Viennese said to Sylvia,

“You know Wien, Fraulein?”

“I’ve been here. Long ago.”

“Ach—long ago! Wien is changed since then. It will change more.” He broke into German. “We never thought the Fuehrer would let us in for a war; we thought he was a clever man; we thought he would get all he wanted by agreement. Now—Lieber Gott, Fraulein, two nights ago we were all blacked out; it was said, ‘The Russian planes are coming over.’ Everyone was frightened. Who wants war! We never thought the Fuehrer . . . We thought he was cleverer than that . . .”

His little pointed nose wrinkled with the disgust of betrayal. Vienna; Gemütlichkeit; and now this ranting mountebank goes and lets us in for war! . . . But Sylvia was thinking, This is the place where they were such beasts to Conrad. Let the Czechs come and bomb it. And the Russians. Let them.

*  *  *

The laggard hours dragged one somehow into Sunday morning; Sylvia wandered out into a city of the dead. She tried to think what London must be like this morning; if the newspapers were right, they were moving there at last—hurriedly assembling gas-masks, digging trenches, crowding to the railway termini in order to run away. Our usual last-minute muddle, thought Sylvia; all hurrying and scurrying and contradicting each other; no wonder the German papers call it panic. Whatever London is like, however, it cannot possibly be more depressed than this is; I never saw such long faces in my life. Upon my word Mussolini does things better; we could do with a bit of the College Yell just to cheer ourselves up. This city of creeping apprehensives waiting for the bombs to burst, telling each other with fiddle faces that they never expected this, watching the mechanised transport going off towards Linz as if it were already their own tumbrils—it’s not what one expected even of Vienna. If the Fuehrer could see it—

She asked the manager of the hotel—a pessimist like his colleague at the Lombardia—

“Shall we be able to hear Hitler’s speech tomorrow evening?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “You cannot not hear it. It is an order that everyone in Germany is to hear it. We have the loud speakers in the restaurant. You will have to dine early because while the speech is going on I am not allowed to serve either food or drink. The staff, you see, must hear also. I regret the inconvenience—”

Sylvia assured him that it was nothing. “Meantime—was gibts?”

“Was gibts? Nichts. You may go and look at our beautiful buildings—while they are still standing . . .”

Instead Sylvia took the Underground to Hietzing. It was a region far removed from her previous experience of Vienna; her idea of the Viennese suburb had been flat wastes crowded with towering workmen’s flats. But here was a township almost French in character; a little church with shady trees; cobbled roads running uphill amongst villas. She found the Woltergasse and amused herself by picking out the flat that must have been Conrad’s; she was undecided between two blocks—both with high-fenced gardens, both with roses and chestnut trees and little summerhouses. A brown shiny chestnut, new burst from its prickly sheath, lay in the gutter; she picked it up and put it in her bag thinking idiotically, “A souvenir for Conrad,” till she remembered, “But of course I shan’t see Conrad—not ever again.” A woman came out of one of the blocks of flats followed by a prancing Aberdeen terrier, coal-black, square-bearded, carrying his tail high. He sniffed at Sylvia, who petted him.

“Nice doggie! Nice doggie!”

The woman smiled pleasantly; she and Sylvia agreed that it was a fine morning. “Schönes wetter!” They talked a little. Sylvia said,

“Do you happen to know if people called Haase ever lived in this house?”

The woman’s face masked instantly as if it had been sprayed with paint.

“Aber—Juden!” As one might say, “Snakes. Vermin. Sorcerers.”

“Ja. Natürlich. Juden.”

“Ich kenne keine Juden.” She scurried off calling to her dog. “Bi-Bi! Bi-Bi!” What can you expect, thought Sylvia, from a woman who calls an Aberdeen terrier “Bi-Bi”? Yet it was annoying, affronting, so silly. You thought of Axey and Conrad—especially Conrad; and the same generic thought of them or of people exactly like them—sent this decent kindly Hausfrau running as if from the Black Death. Oh, idiotic!

Yet of course there are Jews—there are nasty Jews. Axey once said, “It is often the worst of my people who do best. When we are persecuted, the fine Jews, the noble Jews, suffer; but the others—those who can play tricks—they profit.” I must get my mind straight thought Sylvia walking on, I must get my mind straight about Jews; what do I think about them, how do I feel about them? Anything? A lot? Nothing?

At the far end of the Woltergasse there was a little square of grass that might have been the village green at Brixter; one almost expected to see old Mr. Galletly and the Welwyn bus. But instead it was all blocked up with a clutter of mechanised transport—half a dozen greenish-yellow lorries, two staff cars with camouflaged paint, a string of motor-cycles with side-cars. In the sidecars very young soldiers slept, the collars of their field-grey unbuttoned; one was awake cleaning his sparking; plugs.

“Fraulein!”

“Bitte?”

“It is not allowed to inspect the equipment of the military.”

“I’m sorry.”

He looked at her more closely.

“Engländerin?”

“Natürlich.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to look for some friends. I am going back to London tomorrow.”

He said earnestly, “Stay here; you will be much safer. In London already there is panic; everybody is running away; they are killing each other in hundreds trying to reach the trains. It is terrible. How much worse will it be when our planes go over?”

“But suppose the Czech planes come here?”

He stared at her in amazement. “The Czechs have no planes. Who has been telling you such stories? The Czechs can do nothing. Our commandant gives them forty-eight hours; then—choo! we are in Prague. No, no; you will be much safer here than in England . . . And it cannot last long.”

“The Russians?”

“The Russians are all killing each other. Stalin has been assassinated. Perhaps they have not told you . . .”

Sylvia walked back through the Schönbrunn gardens to the underground station in Meidling. Conrad had been quite right; the park gates were plastered with notices “Fur Juden Verboten vom 24.6.38.” “Any Jew entering these gardens” . . . It was a hatred almost inconceivable; somehow here, on the paths along which he had walked home from his work, Conrad’s story became almost unbearably vivid. The Elizabeth-strasse prison was not so very far away; you could see it all happening; insults, beatings, nose-pullings; Jewish women grovelling on the pavements with scrubbing; brushes and dusters. There was a story going round of shops which displayed the notice—“Gas-masks R.M.5; For Jews, R.M.50.” If true, it was fiendish. Such hate. And why?

Sylvia sat down on a sheltered seat behind a hedge of laurels; on the grass plot children played with a large coloured ball. Like the Hietzing woman with her Aberdeen, they seemed to say, “War? Impossible.” But— “wait till the Fuehrer speaks tomorrow night.” Sylvia thought, Jews . . . I must get clear in my mind what I feel about Jews . . . Conrad . . . I shall never see Conrad again? That is now not so certain as it was. If it comes to war—and I’m bound to admit that, despite the fact that nobody wants it, war looks rather likely this morning—I can’t very well leave Portia to get herself home. And I can’t very well leave England in the lurch either. She smiled at her conceit; the children’s ball came rolling to her feet; she threw it back to them; a fair-haired little boy thanked her prettily with a Fascist salute: “Ich danke bestens; heil Hitler!” Sylvia said, “Heil Hitler!” and smiled back at him. Proud little German; confident little cannon fodder! Imagine that pretty child smashed and stricken in an air raid—no, don’t! Think back to England instead. They’ll want everybody. If it’s war, I shall have to go home with Portia. That alters everything. I shall have Basil to face. I shall have Conrad to face. Faced, in that case, they must be.

What did happen to Conrad and me during those extraordinary days—and that most extraordinary night—in Rome? At this distance one sees it more calmly and clearly; or one would if it weren’t for the way in which these proximities—Vienna, Hietzing, the Schönbrunn gardens—have brought Conrad so brilliantly to life. Well, I fell in love with him. He fell in love with me. But we were both of us under extreme stress of emotion, we hardly knew what we were doing, we were rushed along from minute to minute—mounting, mounting. When a passage goes in such crescendo as that you lose the melody; you must look back afterwards to find it again. What kind of a melody is it between Conrad and me?

I feel differently about Conrad from what I ever felt about anyone.

I see Conrad in my mind more clearly than I ever saw anyone.

I love Conrad. Or do I?

Conrad, on the roof of St. Peter’s, asked me to marry him. Could I marry Conrad? I think so. I think not. I should have to see more of him. You can’t tie yourself for life to a man because of the emotions of one long night when neither of you slept very much and one of you was thinking steadily of suicide. I would need to see more of him . . . There would have to be none of this doubt . . . Now, Jews.

It is ridiculous to call Conrad a Jew; he is as English as Basil—only he has ten times Basil’s brains. Yet he is a Jew; he is the son of Axey who is much more Jew than he is; and Axey’s father was probably more Jew still. Inside Conrad the Jew must be hidden, the Jew of all the ages with his beauties and his brilliancies and his—drawbacks. There must be seeds at least of all these in Conrad. So—Conrad is a Jew; let’s face it; admitted.

What do I feel about Jews? I don’t feel anything. Yet I must make myself realise and feel something because it is a subject on which today people feel so acutely. Let me take a line through my friends—people whose opinions I know. Portia likes Jews. Cesar, my father, liked some and disliked others; on the whole he was neutral. George Cadman hadn’t a good word for them; few City men have. Neither had Basil—but he hardly counts. Rule said, “I can’t stand Jews,” but he doesn’t count either. Pringle talked about “Macjudah”; he would be con also. So—the balance is against; but a lot of the cons don’t count.

Well, what do I feel about Jews? I have got to ask myself that question and keep on asking it till I get some sort of answer. What Jews do I really know? Conrad is Conrad; wash him out. Axey—a darling; yet there’s something . . . Old Glarus who bought the Laughing Lady; now there was a close-fisted old thing! . . . But there’s nothing of old Glarus discernible in Conrad.

Why do people hate Jews? I don’t know. Why don’t I hate them? I don’t know that either.

Conrad is a Jew. Conrad has asked me to marry him. Is there anything in my feeling about Jews that would affect that proposition one way or another?

Could I marry a Jew?

If not, why not?

*  *  *

On Monday, after breakfast, Portia decided finally against Prague—“I doubt if we could cross the frontiers now, and anyway I must get home and see—” Together with Sylvia she walked round to the office of the Lufthansa. It was crowded and excited; telephones rang without cease, you were brushed aside and left standing. But the ultimate verdict was perfectly definite—“no planes till Saturday.” “But Saturday is the first of October. Der Tag!” “Natürlich.” “But it’s ridiculous.” “We are exceedingly sorry, it can’t be helped. The legations and the embassies are all evacuating. All planes are fully booked till Saturday.” Portia looked at Sylvia. “We daren’t risk it. Why, even tomorrow, they might . . .

Cook’s office, a few doors further along, was more crowded and excited still; a polyglot and cosmopolitan assortment of travellers whose one point in common seemed to be the desire to quit Vienna. It was twenty minutes before Portia could get any attention at all, but in the end her increasing indignation pinned down a harassed assistant. “Sleepers on the Orient express? Nein, nein—ganz unmöglich. All sleepers are completely booked up.” Portia looked despairing, but Sylvia, consulting the time-table, discovered a train at half past two in the afternoon which would take them as far as Basle. “We could fly on from Basle—we’d catch the Swiss air service.” “Sleepers on that?” Oh, yes, there were sleepers on that. But not today, not till tomorrow. Very well, then, two tomorrow. A little breathless, they left the office; the retreat is secured anyway. It was not till they were back in the Kärtner-strasse that Sylvia realised that she had burnt her boats. She was committed now to returning to England, to Conrad, to Basil, to the Man Who Was and his fresh troubles whatever these might be . . . I never meant to . . . Somehow, without thinking . . . It’s almost as if I’d made war certain . . .

The brilliant September weather still held; the day was rich with sunshine, the Ring sparkled with it. But the air was darkened by that descending fog of apprehension, it was taut as an overstretched fiddle-string, at any moment now it might snap. What will the Fuehrer say tonight? Sylvia tried to picture the Fuehrer himself—walking about in Berlin, having a look at the Sportspalast to see that all was in readiness, strutting a little, perhaps with that rather charming smile of his so like an eager schoolboy’s—so like a girl’s at her first dance. Nervous. He must know what he is going to say; I wonder he doesn’t blow up and burst asunder with the pressure of it. It is too much for any one man; no wonder he goes a little mad—how could he help it? Vienna, London, Paris, Prague—all hanging desperately on the word of this one little man with a brown shirt and shoe-brush moustache—just like Rule’s; and if he were to say, “My friends, I was wrong, it is absurd to go to war, we can settle all this like friends and gentlemen”—what a relief! . . . Yes, and what a hope!

Portia’s correspondents came again to the Hotel Siegfried—presumably because they had nothing else to do. Their views had not changed; the Fuehrer (America) has already given the order to march; the Fuehrer (Vienna) will stand by his promises—he may even say something conciliatory. They wrangled about it and drank beer at Portia’s expense. In the end, to get rid of them, she was obliged to ask them both to dinner that evening. “But you will have to come early—on account of the speech.” The American said “Sure!” The Viennese, more polite, said it would be an extraordinary pleasure. They went away.

In the afternoon Sylvia suddenly realised that she had been putting off a disagreeable duty—or a duty that should have been agreeable but for some queer introverted reason had become otherwise. This Lippmann business. Very well, then—do it now.

There was no great difficulty in reaching the Leopoldstadt district; nor was the Hans Kraeger Strasse any more gloomy or depressing than its neighbouring thoroughfares. Number 14 proved to be one of those vast Vienna apartment buildings where one pushes open a main entrance door that would serve a fortress and finds oneself in a cold stone hall untenanted and uninformative. No board of residents, no concierge, no bell. Sighing for the old onion-eater of the Via Sallustiana, Sylvia thought again “What a warm and living city is Rome compared to this!” As all visitors must do in these places, she waited patiently for some friendly native to appear; presently a slatternly woman came shuffling down the stone stairs in felt slippers; she carried a basket and was apparently on her way to the shops.

“Bitte schön! Bleibt hier Herr Lippmann?”

The woman—an obvious Jewess—stared at her with a mixture of fear and menace; she replied in German.

“I am Frau Lippmann. What do you want?”

“I have a message for Herr Lippmann. From his friend Herr Doctor Haase.”

At the word “Haase” the woman’s face seemed to tighten; fear chased hatred across it and away; it composed itself into a mask. She turned about.

“Come! I will show.”

Her felt slippers flapping, she led the way up a flight of bare stone stairs, up a second. She had a hole the size of a hen’s egg in the heel of one stocking; the other stocking was coming down. Sylvia thought, “These couldn’t have been friends of Conrad’s; associates, perhaps. How?” . . . The Jewess stopped outside a battered door from which the ancient paint was flaking; from within came the sounds of someone practising a cello.

“My husband is a musician. He plays in the Orchestra Cosser. Once he played at the Opera.” She banged on the door. “Moritz! Moritz!” The music stopped.

“Herein!”

“Nein, nein. Komm du hier. Ein Fraulein—Engländerin—”

Sylvia thought, You’re mighty suspicious. I’m not to be allowed in, am I? But the door opened and a little man appeared; he was in rather dirty shirt-sleeves, collarless; his face was waxily white, his hair of an African fuzziness. He carried the bow of his cello in his hand. A nasty little man.

“Was gibt’s?”

Sylvia, hating the whole business, began to explain herself. “I have just come from Rome. I have a message from your friend Herr Doctor Conrad Haase there. He asked me—”

“Ach, Haase!” His eyes flew over Sylvia’s shoulder to where his wife stood waiting; following them round, Sylvia encountered a stare in which fear fought with hostility.

“You know Haase, Fraulein?”

“Slightly.”

“So!” But he didn’t ask her to come in; his wife standing on guard, made no move to get on with her shopping. “He is alive and well?”

“He is all right. He is going to England. You know he cannot stay in Italy now.”

“Natürlich. And what is his message?” Sylvia heard the woman behind her breathing heavily as people breathe in the sensational moments of a film or play. She spoke with deliberate lightness.

“Oh, nothing much. He just wanted to know that you were all right.”

“I am a Jew. This is Vienna. The month is September 1938.”

“I think he knew all that, Herr Lippmann.”

“Well, then, he knows if I am all right.”

There was an unsatisfactory pause. Behind Sylvia the Jewess stood breathing through her prominent nose; the little dirty shiny-faced man—a young man, Sylvia saw, though he had looked elderly at first—stood en face, blocking the half-open door; from the room inside came a waft of stale stuffiness; this was a room where people sat a great deal and from which they emerged very seldom. With that waft of smell there came a gust of fear and distrust and suspicion that linked itself with Herr Lippmann’s evasive eyes and the defensive stare of his wife. Sylvia thought, This is completely unlike anything I expected; Conrad should have told me; I must get away. She said with forced brightness,

“Then shall I tell him you are as well as is possible?” The little Jew burst into a giggle of laughter, saliva ran from the corners of his mouth.

“Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Tell him that. As well as is possible. Gut! Sehr gut!”

Sylvia thought, There seems no point in going on with this; Conrad shouldn’t have let me in for it. Aloud she said politely,

“Well—I have interrupted your music—”

The Jew’s eyes flickered towards his wife’s, read there apparently some sort of signal. He said, “It was kind of you to call; auf wiedersehen!” and shut his door with something of a snap. His wife snatched up her shopping-basket. “I am coming too.” Down these two bare flights of stairs again her mistrust and suspicion propelled Sylvia like a fixed bayonet; impossible to attempt conversation; down they went in a duet of feet—tap! tap! Sylvia’s shoes, and shuffle-shuffle! the felt slippers behind. At the bottom the woman stopped to pull up her stocking; it was held in place by a dirty white garter; Sylvia more than suspected that she had no underclothes.

“Haase gave you no money?”

Sylvia gazed into a sullen face, scowling under untidy hair; for two pins, she thought, she’d spit on me.

“No. He didn’t. Why should he?”

“Because we have none. Now. Auf wiedersehen, fraulein!”

She clutched her shopping-basket to her breast, glanced hastily up and down the street and fairly scuttled away round the corner.

Sylvia made for the trams feeling furious and slightly sick. A horrible man, a horrible woman, a horrible house; the stale reek from that closed secret hidey-hole room clung to her yet. And what kind of friends were these for Conrad? She thought, Am I being unfair; the poor souls have been crushed and brow-beaten and terrorised till they’ve reached the state when every visitor is suspect, an enemy, a spy. Quite probably if I’d seen them a year ago I should have thought them nice happy pleasant people. But it was useless; those furtive flickering eyes; that sullenly defensive drab; “Haase gave you no money?”—and if she didn’t say that he had and that I’d pinched it, she conveyed as much all right. Oh, pfui, pfui Hateful!

Jews; these are what people see when they think of Jews. Hiding, deceiving. And what could Conrad have had to do with people like these? Why should he have cared to know whether they were well or ill? I don’t understand, I don’t understand; I don’t understand Conrad . . .

The tram took her towards the Opera; in an unpleasant dream she over-shot the cross street for the Hotel. Getting out to walk, she looked up and read on the street corner above her head “Elizabeth-strasse.” So! Elizabeth-strasse. This is where Conrad’s prison was. There was a barrack-like building just in front of her that was probably the very place; a sentry in a black pickelhaube stood stiffly at the gate, staff cars swung in and out crowded with officers with deaths-head faces. So this is where it was; and it was people like these . . . She strolled along the opposite pavement, watched disinterestedly by the sentry, remembering Conrad’s story, remembering about the man with consumption and the others. “Just one more Jew; let him go.” . . . But the Elizabeth-strasse prison would not come alive, Conrad would not come alive; here where his presence should have walked beside her, he became a wraith, she could hardly remember his face. Instead she saw a furtive dirty fuzzy little man with a cello-bow; a woman pulling up a torn stocking and staring with terrified hate. No Conrad—unless these were Conrad. It is strange, she thought, how these places, instead of bringing Conrad closer, drive him further away; they make him more alive but more distant; it is as if this atmosphere of Jew-hating soaked into one against one’s will. One cannot altogether escape from the conviction that where so many people—in the main decent sensible people—are banded into this unity of hate, there must be some justification, there must be some reason for it. Do we know the truth? Is there any such thing as truth in the world? Or is the whole of experience and reality and what we call fact a sort of revolving sphere, so that it has no facet, no surface of which you can say, “This is front, this is top, this is right side up”?

What will the Fuehrer say tonight?

Wandering and worrying, she came back late to the Hotel, decided to pack, took longer over it than she had intended, forgot about the early dinner and in the end had to hurry downstairs. Portia and her correspondents were drinking vermouths in the entrance hall—Portia looking round her for Sylvia with that glittering exasperation Sylvia knew so well. She was hurrying self-reproach; fully to join them when the Manager called her from behind his little counter.

“Miss Savage! A telegram.”

Sylvia took it hastily. Of course it must needs arrive at this moment when I can hardly open it, when I have certainly no time to consider it, whatever it is. And I had the whole long weary afternoon in which I would have been glad of it! . . . She saw that Portia’s head was averted in exhaustedly polite attention to her guests; like lightning she slit the envelope.

“Bearded lady arrested official secrets what did I tell you pringle.”

*  *  *

They dined in the Lehar Hall of the Hotel and the framed manuscript scores, hung round the walls, struck a note at once incongruous and pathetic; pre-War, incredible, the rare gay city of Lehar and Strauss, the laughing capital. Gone, gone, and the pale ghost of it that was raising itself in the post-war years gone now to follow it . . . The dinner was a hurried apologetic affair; it was as if the Hotel Siegfried said, “This is not Austrian, this is not Viennese; please do not run away with the impression that, left to ourselves, we would ever have done this.” The waiters, more perfectly English-spoken than ever, went out of their way to be solicitous to the English guests, pressing this dish, recommending the other, hurrying forward at the beckoning of an eye-lid. “I am let down,” the restaurant seemed to say, “Don’t blame me.”

The place was full, not crowded; with the exception of what looked like a Dundonian Scot dining alone and sparingly at a side table, Sylvia, Portia and the American seemed to be the only non-German clients present. Listening absently to the wearisome guess-work reiterations of her party, Sylvia looked round the room; it was quietly expectant but without enthusiasm. The guests sat as people waiting for a train; as people sit staring and absent in a railway waiting-room knowing that the train will come, knowing that they must catch it and depart for some destination in which they have no great interest. Faces were long, doubtful, speculative. It was as dull as church. Interest quickened only when two young women—unescorted—entered and strolled regally through the restaurant: very smart hats, fur coats. The American nudged Sylvia. “Ex Jew keeps. They’re on the streets now—lots of ‘em. Swell kids.” The Siegfried’s clients, stirring a little, followed the swell kids with their eyes. Sylvia thought, Vienna’s still Vienna.

The waiters came and said apologetically that it was five minutes to eight; “if you have any further orders; the speech . . .” “Forgive us,” they seemed to say, “forgive Vienna for this gross breach of taste.” Portia, glancing round, ordered another halbe Flasche of wine; the American and the Viennese looked jointly relieved. “I will have a glass,” thought Sylvia, “we’ll need it.” Presently began the endless childish musical-box tinkle of Deutschlandsender; a commentator; the Sportspalast; a roaring of heavy brass bands; the practised aplomb of Goebbels; and then, with a shriek—Hitler.

All through that long shrill screaming speech Sylvia, sipping her wine slowly, focussed her attention on her fellow-listeners. Almost at the outset she had the conviction, “He isn’t going to say anything new”; she saw the puzzled unhappy acceptance of this idea growing in the faces round her. To judge by the timbre of the Sportspalast cheering, they were a little puzzled there too; they had expected more—or less. Some kind words for France, for Chamberlain. Some ranting, some boasting, a great deal of Nuremberg over again. And then, with mounting venom, with shrill reiteration, the harsh ugly word, “Benesh”, “Benesh . . . Benesh . . . Benesh . . . Benesh.” “Here are two men opposite and facing one another; there is Benesh; here am I” .. . Benesh, Benesh. Shriek after shriek . . . “There is for Germany no further territorial problem in Europe . . . Benesh has the decision in his own hands . . . Either . . . Or we go and fetch this freedom for ourselves” . . . “Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!” . . . And then at last Deutschland über alles; everybody standing and saluting; arms outstretched; long, long, gloomy faces; no enthusiasm, not a cheer. It’s all over; he has said nothing new; if we had any hopes they are dead, if we had any fears we have them still. A let-off in one way; sentence of death in another. Heil Hitler!

Sipping her wine, her ears beaten upon by that interminable clamour, that querulous raging outcry, Sylvia watched two groups at neighbouring tables. The first sat immediately in front of her; two fattish little men in their thirties, a youngish woman, a young girl. The girl had her back to Sylvia; her plaits of hair fell over her brown jacket; during the whole of that long speech she never moved a muscle. One man twitched occasionally in his seat; the other grasped his beer-mug and stared stolidly at the loud-speaker with an expression of disgust. The woman, her eyes and mouth wide open, gaped under her big hat with blank non-comprehension. It was impossible to say whether any of them were taking in a word; they were there, they listened, their thoughts—if they had any—were apparently far away. When, at the end, they stood up for Deutschland über alles, they regarded their feet. An extraordinary—you would have said almost an inhuman—phlegm . . . The other group was contrastingly alive; they had begun the evening with what seemed to be a little celebration—a bottle of champagne in an ice-pail, a special menu. A father—red-faced, bald, uncertain whether to be jovial or ferocious; a very pretty mother a good deal younger than her husband; and the obvious son—a good-looking boy with curly hair and the mother’s nervous fragile face. Sylvia thought at first sight of them, “Twenty-one-today! I’ll bet it is. And what a day for it!” As the speech went on they drooped and drooped; it was pitiable, it was almost indecent to watch them. The father kept up a sort of bravado, his eyes rolled, he waved his cigar; but every now and then his glance slipped sideways and down he went like a burst balloon. The mother openly broke down; now and then she clapped her hands gaily—then she forgot to be patriotic and cried into her handkerchief. Twenty-one sat chain-smoking and staring at his coffee-cup; you could see the thoughts running through his mind. “As my life was opening,” he thought, “it closes. I am going to be killed—there is no way out of it, none.” In his intelligent fragile face despair enthroned itself; he dare not look at his mother or she at him . . . The speech ended; the brass bands began again, routing and roaring; the father ordered beer; they were drinking it when Sylvia left, trying to look hearty, trying to be brave, completely failing to meet each other’s eyes . . .

And, oh! she thought, in how many hotels and restaurants in England, round how many wireless sets, round how many firesides, is just that group collected. All struggling with the same abysmal terror, all keeping up face with the same bright tragic subterfuges, all pretending one thing and feeling another, all asking in their hearts, “Why, why, why?” If they could all see each other, wouldn’t they one and all get up and shout in Conrad’s words—“To hell with this; I’m not going to fight!”

And walking out of the Lehar Room behind Portia, in front of the still hopeful little Viennese, the still gloomy American with his spade-shaped face, Sylvia said—and she almost said it aloud—

“They do see each other. I was right, I was right. There won’t be any war.”

*  *  *

It was when they all stood up for Deutschland über alles that the telegram crackled in Sylvia’s pocket, reminding her. Till then she had completely forgotten its existence. When the guests had gone she held it out to Portia.

“I think you’d better see this.”

Portia stared at it in surprise. “Is it from my husband?” But she knew it wasn’t; for many hours now she had known that he wasn’t going to wire to her, wasn’t going to tell her anything.

“No, it’s from Pringle; to me.”

Portia took it hesitatingly, read it with wrinkling brow

“Bearded Lady? What—?”

Sylvia flushed; she had forgotten that bit.

“I think—I’m afraid—he means Mr. Tweed. I expect he didn’t want to put the name.”

Portia took that obstacle well.

“It’s immaterial . . . But do you see what he says?” Of course I see what he says.

“He says ‘arrested’—oh, the thing’s incredible! How can Pringle . . . Why did he wire to you?”

“I wired him from Rome. I—I thought if Mr. Tweed was too busy—”

Portia’s face became suddenly old; watching her, Sylvia could have wept.

“I see . . . It may be Pringle’s idea of a joke.”

“Yes. But Mr. Tweed said in his letter . . . the Unemployed . . .”

“I know. Even so, it’s incredible.” Her foot tapped the floor, the bunch of ornaments at her waist gave out a feeble jingle. “Well, we’d better go to bed. We shall find out all about it soon. We should be home on Wednesday afternoon.”

‘Home’! thought Sylvia, what a word! She said tearfully, “Perhaps I shouldn’t have wired.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Cold and metallic again, literally steeling herself. “We may as well know what we have to face. Even if Pringle’s wrong—he must be wrong—it’s a line to go on.” (“That’s more than my husband would have given me.” Poor Portia!) “Some incredible stupidity—one would think the authorities had enough to occupy their so-called minds with at present . . . Well, goodnight, Sylvia.”

“Oh, goodnight!”

In her magnificent room—the Hotel Siegfried had rooms to spare just now and at low prices—Sylvia took off and carefully folded her black coat and skirt. And then suddenly she fell sobbing on to the bed. Oh, poor Portia, poor Portia! And poor Sylvia! And poor everybody!

XVIII

The Swissair plane from Basle sailed contemptuously over the French frontier, over the old distinguishable trenches by St. Menehould, over Rheims, Soissons, Albert. At Albert you could see that invincible statue of the Virgin still poised on the apex of its spire. “Here I still stand,” it seemed to say, “for you to pot at. Go ahead; you’ll miss me again.” . . . So we are to have all that once more; oh, surely not! . . . The plane, cleaving sunshine, swept over a disturbed oyster-coloured Channel in a matter of minutes; sliding down the south wind, it came to Croydon.

There was nothing very remarkable about Croydon; the Customs were quick, but not much quicker than usual. But the Swissair bus rolled Portia and Sylvia into a London that had changed, in the short time since their leaving it, into something foreign, un-English, something out of the news-reels or the picture papers; a London having its first big fright since Prince Charlie’s Highlanders danced at Derby. The concussion of alarm had shaken it as an ant heap is shaken by a poking stick; and with very similar results—an indirected scurrying and confusion . . . Notices everywhere about gas-masks; Boy Scouts running in all directions with messages, stopping people, asking them to come and help with this task or that; all the Tubes closed between Piccadilly and the river; in the Parks the raw earth mountains one associates horribly with new-dug graves . . . In the Commons, one gathered from the newspaper placards, Chamberlain was presently to tell of his failure; he would say that war was no longer to be avoided. No longer to be avoided? thought Sylvia, it is here; now for the first time we see what we have all been talking about. In Italy war was a bogey that barked at one occasionally from the headlines and the roof-top trumpets; nothing less warlike than Vienna could conceivably be imagined; Switzerland was its Girls-school-and-milk-chocolate self. In the train coming through Austria, one had seen the armed sentries silhouetted on the roofs of the high station buildings, one had seen the troop trains and the equipment trains packing the yards at Linz but all that was nothing more than might have been accounted for by Territorial manoeuvres. Why, we weren’t even wakened up at the frontier! . . . But here, home in London, was something vitally different; here were people scurrying to defend, here was action, here was imminence, just a trace of panic. We thought we had been near the Front; on the contrary, the Front is here.

For Portia there were two crises—the nation’s and her own; characteristically she put her own first—yes, even before a gas-mask. “There’s no sense in going to Hambling, Sylvia, till we know what’s happened there; we mustn’t be precipitate, must we?” She had wired for rooms at the Grosvenor Hotel; with Humbug Hall prodigality she had taken a suite—a sitting-room, two bedrooms, a bathroom. “We may be here quite a while, Sylvia; I must have space.” Sylvia thought, What happens when the air raids start? They are talking of twenty thousand casualties . . . Us? . . .

To Portia, enthroned in the Grosvenor’s magnificence, there was presently shown in a black-coated gentleman with a face carved out of what seemed to be bluish wood; he had sleek black hair dragged carefully over a bald patch and the ponderous jaw of a French caricature of Mussolini. Sylvia took a dislike to him at sight but Portia greeted him with unusual animation.

“Oh, Mr. Sleason! Sylvia, this is Mr. Sleason, my solicitor.”

Sylvia asked dutifully if she should go.

“No, no. We may want you. Mr. Sleason, this is Miss Savage, my secretary.”

Mr. Sleason blew out his lips and gave Sylvia an uncompromising look, and said with an unaccountable suggestion of menace, “Oh! This is her, is it?”

Portia said brightly, “Yes this is her.” They sat down at the round table in the middle of the room. “Now, Mr. Sleason, do tell me just what has happened.”

Mr. Sleason put his wooden hands together. “Well—how much have you heard?”

“Nothing. I had two absurd letters in Rome from my husband saying that the Police had been making some unspecified enquiries, and an equally idiotic telegram from our manservant at Hambling saying he had been arrested. The whole thing seems preposterous . . . preposterous . . .” Her nerve deserted her. “Mr. Sleason, where is my husband?”

Mr. Sleason appeared to be enjoying himself. He blew out his lips again.

“At the moment, I’m afraid he’s in Police custody.”

“In custody!”

“Yes. We applied for bail of course both for him and for Mr. Haase. I’m sorry to say it was unsuccessful. I really think they were unnecessarily stiff about it but there it was.”

Sylvia broke her good resolution of silence. “You said—you said—Mr. Haase. Mr. Axel Haase?”

“Certainly. Axel Haase.”

“Is he arrested too?”

“Yes, of course he is . . . I think perhaps you’d better let me begin at the beginning. You see . . . well, short and sweet, both Mr. Tweed and Mr. Haase have been arrested for a contravention of the Official Secrets Act.”

There was a sharp little silence. Portia put a hand up to her face with a tinkle of Mexican silver; Sylvia saw herself opening that telegram in the hall of the Hotel Siegfried. “Bearded lady arrested official secrets what did I tell you pringle.” Portia said dazedly, “But isn’t that—spying?”

“Oh, no. Oh lord, no!” Mr. Sleason galvanised himself into life. “The Official Secrets Act covers a lot of minor offences besides actual espionage. It isn’t as bad as that. Oh dear, no.”

“Well, what is it as bad as?”

Mr. Sleason began to rumble. “Well, the charge is—mind you it’s only a charge yet; they haven’t proved it—”

“Do you think they will prove it?”

“We must try to prevent them . . . But the charge is something like this. Your husband, Mrs. Tweed, was in the Ministry. He had access to secret information.”

He gave Portia a keen glance, but she said only, “Of course, of course.”

“The charge is that he gave away that information to Mr. Haase—”

“What information?”

“Information in regard to forthcoming contracts. Acting on this information Mr. Haase and a syndicate of his friends made considerable profits on the Stock Exchange. The charge is that these profits were divided up and Mr. Tweed got his share. Haase says that every penny he made was devoted to Jewish relief in Austria”—

A bell rang again in Sylvia’s head: Austria . . . Vienna . . . Conrad was in Vienna; Conrad was imprisoned in Vienna . . . These Lippmanns . . .

“. . . in Austria; but of course there is only his word for that and it would be very difficult to prove. And in any case it doesn’t make any difference to the main issue.”

Portia tinkled again. “What does my husband say?”

“He denies it, of course. Haase can’t deny his Stock Exchange transactions, but our defence will be that these were his own affair—just his own business acumen. They’ll have to connect it with Mr. Tweed. It may be difficult . . .”

Sylvia had been seeing Axey; Axey at Humbug Hall; his smile under those frightened eyes; “my-son-Conerat”; kind Axey; Axey the friend. A week of strains and reactions came suddenly to a head; she burst out wildly, “I—I don’t believe Mr. Haase ever did anything of the kind.”

Woodenly Mr. Sleason turned, rumbling this time very deeply.

“Of what kind, Miss Savage?”

“Well—cheating like you said.”

Mr. Sleason smiled. “I am very glad to hear you say that, Miss Savage. Because I believe the Prosecution may call you as a witness.”

“Call—me?”

“Yes, you. That is why I was so interested to meet you this afternoon. I understand they will allege that you participated in one of Mr. Haase’s transactions.”

“I did! I never even heard—” And then suddenly and with the most objectionable vividness a line from the Times sprang up before her eyes; a line from the Financial Pages in small neat print. “Alnakers (4/-); 4/-, -/6”, it said. Her hand flew to her face; she felt it crimson under her fingers. “Oh, well—I suppose—oh—there was a thing—”

Mr. Sleason’s smile became hideous.

“Quite so,” he said and beat his wooden hands together, “Quite so.”

“But—but—” Sylvia sprang suddenly to her feet—“they can’t say that I—that I had anything to do with it—”

Rumbling, Mr. Sleason reassured her. “No, no; no, no. You will be a witness, not a defendant. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here now.”

“I won’t be a witness. I won’t give evidence against Axey! I mean, Mr. Haase.”

Portia said, “Sylvia!”: Mr. Sleason spread his hands. “I shouldn’t tell the Crown that. My dear young lady, if they call upon you to give evidence, you will have to give it. And as a matter of fact, they’ll probably be here to see you very soon.”

“Who will? The Police?”

“Well, someone from Scotland Yard. They’ll probably want to ask you both some questions. It won’t be very severe—or I hope not.”

Portia gave a wry smile. “The Unemployed. That’s what he used to call them.” But Sylvia’s mind had moved on, terrified, racing.

“Is Conrad in this?”

Mr. Sleason stared. “Who?”

“Conrad Haase. Mr. Haase’s son.”

“I didn’t even know that he had one. It’s the first I’ve heard of him. That’s not to say he hasn’t been, in it, of course. When you come to a Jewish family—”

“Well, he hasn’t!” . . . Portia said again, “My dear Sylvia!” but the room was beginning to go round. “Of course Conrad wasn’t in it. They can’t say that—they daren’t—they shan’t!” . . . With a desperate effort she pulled herself together; in another moment I’ll be shrieking like a housemaid, rolling on the floor; I could—oh, I could! And in that moment, while Portia stared coldly and Mr. Sleason looked cross and embarrassed in that moment the telephone rang.

The shriek of the bell calmed the atmosphere like a referee’s whistle. Mr. Sleason, who was nearest, picked up the receiver; Sylvia forced her eyes to a smile, her lips to the words “The Unemployed?” Portia nodded grimly . . . But Mr. Sleason was gripping the receiver like a man possessed, he was shouting into it insanely, his face had undergone a complete change, it was purple, it was almost jolly. “What! Who? Are you sure?” He turned round beaming, ten years younger.

“My dear ladies! That was the hotel office. They rang up to say that Chamberlain is going to Munich tomorrow to meet Hitler and Mussolini. My God! It’s peace!”

“Chamberlain?” Portia came back from astronomical distances; it was as if someone had brought in the name of Tiglath-Pileser.

“Yes, Chamberlain. And Daladier. Thank God! Thank God!” Amazingly there were tears on Mr. Sleason’s cheeks; he said rather frantically, “You must excuse me, you must excuse me . . . I have a son . . . My God, it’s marvellous!” He rushed at Portia and kissed her.

But Sylvia stood thinking, Chamberlain . . . Conrad . . . Conrad . . . Chamberlain . . . my head’s going round. One crisis at a time—oh, one crisis at a time; please!

*  *  *

The Police, it seemed, wasted no time. Crisis or no Crisis. Within half an hour—Mr. Sleason being now gone, after some learned remarks about Bow Street and Counsel—the floor waiter brought in a card.

“Inspector Wallason. Scotland Yard.”

Portia gave Sylvia her twisted smile. “We shall have to see him . . . I’m sorry . . . Show this gentleman up, please.”

Sylvia had been anticipating a figure in uniform, but to her relief Inspector Wallason was a fatherly-looking person dressing in nothing more conspicuous than a waterproof and a bowler. He suggested a Saloon Bar, Woolwich Arsenal, Test Matches, the Garden Suburb, bowls. But when he spoke there was a nastiness somewhere that betrayed his comparatively genial appearance.

“I shall have to ask you ladies a few questions.” He looked sharply from one to the other, identifying them. “Mrs. Tweed? Miss Savage? I’ll talk to Miss Savage first. If you wouldn’t mind, Mrs. Tweed——”

Portia said, “I’ll wait in my room. Call, Sylvia, when you’re ready.” With her twisted smile she went out.

The Inspector sat down rather heavily, grunting a little; he was a stout man.

“Well, well, Miss Savage. Mrs. Tweed’s Secretary, eh? At Hambling Hall . . . Any tips for the Stock Exchange today?”

Sylvia said coldly, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’re very lucky there, aren’t you?”

“I’ve nothing to do with it.”

“Oh, come, come. You made a bit there the other day, didn’t you now? Air-crafts, wasn’t it?”

Alnakers Limited. Oh, curse Alnakers Limited.

“I did that one transaction. It’s the only one I’ve ever done in my life.”

“And you thought of it all for yourself. Picked it out because it was a lucky name, maybe?”

“Of course I didn’t. I was advised by Mr. Haase.”

“Oh! Mr. Haase. You saw a lot of Mr. Haase?”

“He often came to the house. I couldn’t help seeing him.”

“What made you think of asking him?”

“Well—I don’t know. He’d been very kind to me always. He knew a lot about these things.”

“I see. You’re quite sure, Miss Savage, you’re quite sure it was Mr. Haase who gave you that tip?”

“Of course I am.” But—oh the unpleasantness that had suddenly crept into that jovial Saloon-bar voice.

“It wasn’t Mr. Tweed?”

“Of course not.”

“You never asked him for a tip?”

“Never.”

“Why not, now?”

“Because I didn’t think he knew anything about money matters. I wouldn’t have trusted him to pick out anything good. Besides, I wasn’t always asking; it was just that once—”

There was a little silence while the Inspector studied his boots. Then suddenly his head shot up—like a startled bird’s.

“You know, Miss Savage, it won’t do you any good to try to protect Mr. Tweed.”

Sylvia was affronted. “Protect him! Why should I protect him?”

“Well, why shouldn’t you?”

“I hate the sight of him!”

The Inspector gave her a hard unpleasant stare; but apparently she had convinced.

“You do, do you? Well, I daresay you have your reasons. I won’t bother you with that . . . Now, Miss Savage, you must have known a good deal about Mr. Tweed’s affairs—”

“I knew nothing.”

“You must have seen a lot of his papers and correspondence.”

“Why on earth should I? He wasn’t my employer.”

“You never had a look round his desk or his papers, eh? . . . All right, all right, don’t get het-up about it; you didn’t, then. But you’re quite sure you never heard anything?”

“Quite absolutely sure.”

“Or saw anything.”

“Nothing.”

“And you had only that one little flutter?”

“Yes.”

“And you got the tip from Mr. Haase?”

“Yes.”

“And he told you he got it from Mr. Tweed?”

“Certainly not. I asked him what I should put my money into and he just thought for a while and said that.”

“I see. And it came off a winner. It didn’t strike you to wonder about it afterwards.”

“Why should it? I told you I knew nothing about these matters.”

“I see . . . Now, look here, Miss Savage; here’s Mr. Tweed in the Ministry that deals with Air Defence contracts; here’s Mr. Haase tips you an aircraft share. Do you mean to tell me you didn’t put two and two together?”

“If—if you put it like that. . . I can only say I didn’t. I didn’t even know at first the things were aircraft shares. If I had it wouldn’t have suggested anything to me.”

“I see! . . . Well, you were an innocent, weren’t you!”

“You don’t suppose—you don’t suppose—I was guilty?”

“It’s a thing I’ve got to consider along with other things.” The Inspector was quite unmoved. “All I know is that you were one of the people who made money out of this show. I’m askin’ you these questions just to find out how you made it. . . Well, you’re sure you can’t give me any further help.”

“I would if I could. I can’t think of anything.”

“You’ll have to give evidence in Court, you know. These barristers are devils for diggin’ things out of you. If you’ve anything to say, better say it now.”

“I’ve nothing, thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. I don’t enjoy this any more than you do. So that’s all, is it? . . . And you didn’t like Mr. Tweed?”

“I did not.”

“But you did like Mr. Haase?”

“He was always very kind to me . . . Yes, I did.”

“Like his son, too?” He smiled at Sylvia’s sudden start. “You met him in Rome, didn’t you? Did he tell you anything about all this?”

“Of course he didn’t. He knew nothing about it.”

“Sure?”

“Absolutely.” (Oh, but am I; am I?)

“Well, well. . . He said nothing anyway?”

“I tell you, no.”

“Well—all right . . . Sure you’ve nothing more to tell me. Think twice . . . Think a third time . . . All right; if you’ll pass the word for Mrs. Tweed—”

Sylvia went thankfully down to the Lounge to summon Portia; but, this duty once done, the Lounge became a blackout, she had to drop hurriedly into a chair. I’ve lived to be questioned by the Police. Well, of course, that happened once before—when Cesar shot himself. But that was different. This time they suspect. That beast of a man thought I had been in it. I suppose it looks like it. Should I have put two and two together as he said? Perhaps I should . . . I think I must have been out of my mind at Humbug Hall; the fool I was all ways! And was I a fool in Rome, too? A bigger fool than ever? A fatal fool this time?

That remains to be seen. Conrad remains to be seen . . . Conrad . . . Crisis . . . I think I’ll go mad . . .

XIX

At eight the next morning Sylvia woke up with a confused impression that Mr. Chamberlain had been arrested under the Official Secrets Act while Conrad was flying to Munich. In the course of a few seconds the crises sorted themselves out, but she decided that it would be impossible, even if it were politic, to sleep longer. Portia had apparently already gone out perhaps to establish touch with the Bearded Lady. Not, thought Sylvia, that she is caring very much what happens to her Pelham; and can you blame her? She tried to picture Pelham and Axey in a cell—cells?—at Bow street but the vision would not take shape. She could not picture them at all; and anyway, while it was endurable so to think of Pelham, it was horrible so to think of Axey.

For want of anything better to do she was arranging the flowers in the sitting-room when the telephone rang. “Miss Savage? There is a gentleman to see you.”

Sylvia’s heart gave a great leap. “What sort of gentleman? I mean young, old, middling—”

“Oh, young, Miss.”

Conrad! It must be. “I’ll come down.”

Half way down in the lift she was struck by the hideous thought, “Suppose it’s Basil?” But in the hall was neither Basil nor Conrad but merely the almost forgotten Rule. And a disreputable sight he was. He was dressed in a discoloured blue blazer and a pair of creaseless flannels; he had not shaved and his unruly hair flapped about his temples like the broken wing of a crow. He said groaningly, “I’ve had a most frightful journey.”

Sylvia replied tartly that he was probably not the only one.

“No, I know. But mine was worse than most. I’ve lost all my luggage. I came back across France. I got the wrong train at Paris—had to come by Newhaven. You should see the French railways.”

“Where have you come from?”

He looked at her in surprise. “Tangier, of course.”

“I’m sorry, I forgot. We’ve had a good deal to think about . . . How did you know we were here.”

“I rang up old Sleason. I guessed you’d be about the place somewhere.”

“I suppose you know about—your father.”

“Oh, yes. I know about that all right. In fact, I’ve known for some days; Quashy wrote me to Tangier.”

“So Quashy knows. Where is she?”

“Ask me another . . . It wasn’t my father’s affair that brought me back.”

“Then what was it?”

Rule stared at her again. “Damn it, there’s a crisis!”

“But I thought you were a pacifist.”

“Well, so I am, maybe.” (But you came back, thought Sylvia approvingly; and the quickest way, too. If you had been what you said you were, you’d have stayed in Tangier.) “Anyway I couldn’t have stuck it out there any longer.”

“No?”

“No . . . Sylvia, I’ve had a frightful experience.”

“Well, so have most of us.”

“I don’t mean that. A spiritual experience. I must tell you it some time.”

“Must you, Rule?”

“Yes. I want your advice. I want your help,”

“Not the New Movement—?”

He shuddered violently. “No, no! But I really have had a terrible time. And that journey across France! You can’t imagine it. A free fight at every stop—people trying to get on to the train; you couldn’t move in the corridors for luggage; blasted women coming to Paris with their husbands who’d been called up—all howling and blubbering and then cuddling in the corners. More than cuddling. Lights out in the train near Paris; black darkness; I believe someone pinched my luggage. Don’t talk to me about the French!”

Sylvia said she wouldn’t. “Why did you ask for me? Why not for your mother?”

He cast a dissatisfied glance at his garments.

“She’d have started chipping me about my appearance. She always does.”

“Well, Rule, there is an—”

“I know, I know! Don’t you start. I can’t stand naggers. As soon as I get cleaned up, I’ll go out and buy something. Do you think I could get a room in this hotel?”

“I expect so.”

“Well, go and ask for one for me, do. I don’t like to go up to the desk looking like this.”

Sylvia thought—you came back; give what you like as the reason, you came back because of the Crisis; you’re not so bad. At the reception desk she got him a room, explaining his situation; they said—as she had said—that he wasn’t the only one. Sylvia went back to Rule.

“I’ve got you a room. On the same floor as ours.”

He looked round him rather wildly.

“And, look here; you’ll come out for a walk with me this afternoon? I can’t talk here.”

“If Portia doesn’t want me.”

“She mustn’t want you. This is important.”

Because it’s you, thought Sylvia; you haven’t changed, Master Rule, so much as I thought. She watched his atrocious trousers disappearing upwards in the lift; only then did she remember the disappointment about Conrad.

Was Conrad a dream? Now that I am back to these mountebanks, does Conrad—does reality—disappear?

*  *  *

The Clan Mountebank was mustering. At half past ten a brassy little voice came over the telephone. “Can I speak to Mrs. Tweed, please.”

“I’m afraid she’s out . . . It’s Quashy, isn’t it?”

“Oh, Sylvia! Darling, darling, how are you! Isn’t it all simply frightful?”

“Yes . . . Where are you?”

“I’m at Livia’s . . . Oh, I forgot you don’t know Livia’s. Never mind; mother does. You tell her “Livia’s” and she’ll understand. As a matter of fact at the moment I’m at the A.R.P. Headquarters at Westminster.”

“What are you doing there?”

“Darling! Assembling gas-masks, of course. I mean, respirators. Simply assassinative. Too finger-destroying. The beastly india-rubber on the things is like iron and of course the Home Office hasn’t sent us enough machines and we have to do it all with our hands. Mine’ll never be the same again. I made a million masks yesterday. Darling, I ask you!”

“I’m sure you did. When are you coming round to see us?”

There was a little pause; then Quashy asked, “Darling, how can I?”

“You won’t be making gas-masks much longer.”

“No—but . . . There’ll be heaps to do. I’m training as an Air Raid Warden too.”

My God! thought Sylvia; Quashy an Air Raid Warden: my poor country! She said, rather sharply, “Don’t you want to come?”

Sylvia thought, No, she doesn’t; and if I were her, I wouldn’t either. But Quashy shouldn’t be encouraged. She said firmly that there was such a thing as duty.

“I know, sweetness. Stern daughter of the voice of God and all. But honestly, honey, what good could I do?”

Little rat! thought Sylvia. And yet it isn’t quite like Quashy either; she must have some reason; what can it be? She’s been up to something. A man? Robin?

“After the awful trial, angelness, then I’ll come. But let’s get that over first.”

“You don’t seem to be worrying much about it.”

“Well, I am and I amn’t. You see, Sylvia petness, he was simply bound to get run in for something, now wasn’t he—”

“We-ell—”

“And it might have been something so much worse. It might have been something really downright disgraceful. Like assaulting women or something. You know his methods, Watson.”

Sylvia thought, Blast your impudence! She said, “Doesn’t giving away secret information seem bad enough for you?”

“Of course, darling. Just mortifying. But after all, they haven’t proved anything yet, have they?”

Sylvia felt herself rebuked. “I know. Of course not. I’m sorry.”

“But no, angel; I mean, of course, I quite expect they will. But you do see what I mean when I say it might have been much worse, don’t you? . . . What are you and Portia going to do?”

“I think we’re going down to Hambling tomorrow.”

“Oh!” . . . A marked pause . . . “Darling, when you’re there—”

“Yes?”

“Do give my room the once-over, will you? I left in rather a hurry. There may be one or two little things kicking about. You know—little feminine this-and-thats I wouldn’t like people to be pawing about. Though I expect Pringle—”

“Pringle wouldn’t do your room would he?”

“No-o. Though I expect he gave it a once-over. Give it another, sweetness, for Quashy’s sake . . . What fun to think you’ll see Pringle.”

“Is it?”

“Oh, dar-ling! Sweetness-Pringle? Give him my love. Tell him the password’s Tickety-Boo. ’Member that? Tickety Boo; that’s the password, tell him . . . Well, angel-angel, I must fly. I see my section leader coming. My dear, too Boadicea—”

The receiver went down.

*  *  *

The day drifted on, sunnily quiet. At intervals the wireless spoke; Mr. Chamberlain had arrived at Munich; he looked cheerful; he was doing this and that; within an hour he was in conference with the other three. A go-getter there, if you like; who would ever have thought it of old Birmingham, N-D-C Neville! At lunch-time they were still discussing . . . So Mussolini had something up his sleeve, had he, after all? And they were right at the Duchessa Montrini’s when they said so? But then they said everything at the Duchessa Montrini’s; like the Racing Correspondents, they tipped every horse in the race amongst them. But still . . . “Duce, Du-ce Du-CE!”

Sylvia thought of getting herself a gas-mask—you never knew; we weren’t out of the wood yet—but when she saw the endless queues, the battalions of tired silent petulant people sitting on the benches, her heart failed her. She decided to bank once more on the hope of peace. If what they said were true there wouldn’t be enough masks anyway for those who were already waiting; they would get the satisfaction of “having their names took”, but that would be all. Yet somewhere close by, Quashy and her colleagues were wearing their hands to pieces stretching the recalcitrant rubber over the containers—wearing their hands out because the promised machines had not been supplied. England, my England!

Portia stayed out; the suspense and inertia began to play havoc with Sylvia’s nerves. Conrad; where is Conrad? He doesn’t know, of course, that we are here, nor do I know where he is. I had banked utterly on being able to find him at Elding. He may be there, but it’s unlikely. Desperate for something to do, she dialled trunks at last. She had forgotten Axey’s number; it took the exchange some time to find Elding Grange; in the end after a deal of buzzing and cross-numbering while Sylvia’s hand grew numb on the receiver, back came the answer she had more than expected.

“Sorry, no reply.”

“You’re sure you got the right house?”

“Quite sure. I’ll try again if you like.”

“Oh, no thanks . . .”

So Conrad—of course—wasn’t at Elding Grange; where was he? Does he exist at all, she thought again, or does he exist only in Rome? She took his last letter from her handbag and read it; that was real enough—even if it did stir up nasty questionings about these Lippmanns. Where is he; I must find him. But as soon as I come back here I am caught up in this maze of Humbuggery—all these Pelhams and Rules and Quashys and Pringles; I cannot get on with my own life. Rule this very afternoon, with some frightful experience (that is no experience) to pour into my ears. What can it be? Probably an Arab woman, and he thinks he’s the first, the very first—

In the middle of her thoughts Portia came in suddenly, taut as steel and as strong. She had contrived a new hat, a fresh perm. Sylvia thought admiringly, you do stand up to things! In answer to Sylvia’s question Portia said, Yes, she had seen them.

“Are they all right?”

“They’re all right. Pelham looks better than Axey.”

He would, thought Sylvia—the little beast. She said, “I thought you were never coming in.”

“I had to see Mr. Sleason. I had a long talk with him. He really is most helpful; I wish you hadn’t been so silly yesterday. D’you know, I think the case will fail.”

“Oh, I do hope so.” As against Axey anyway, as against Axey.

“Yes . . . Any news here?”

“Rule is here . . . Quashy rang up . . .” She began the tedious explanations. “I—I suppose you didn’t see or hear anything of Conrad? I rang up Elding Grange but there was no reply.”

“Of course not. The house is shut up.”

“I can’t think where he can be. I suppose—”

But Portia had forgotten Conrad.

*  *  *

There was no dodging Rule; he lay in wait, he marched Sylvia up Grosvenor Place, across the Corner, past the Achilles Statue, past that frightful giant’s cemetery of grave-mound trenches, into the vast hinterland of the Park. He had bought himself a brown suit that fitted him hardly at all; he had achieved a shave but not that eternally necessary hair-cut. Hatless, he drove forward with a face of doom, the black crow’s wing flapping over his white forehead. Sylvia, struggling to keep pace with his determined strides, thought, It’s hard, when life is often so unexciting, that all these crises should arrive at once. Conrad’s—which means my own; Portia-Pelham-Axey’s; now Rule is going to stage yet another. They might give one a chance to see the real one. She said, “Rule, before I drop exhausted, do tell me what it’s all about.”

He slackened his pace a little.

“You’re not going to laugh at me?”

“I couldn’t laugh at anything.”

“You can’t laugh at this. It’s very serious. To me anyway . . . Sylvia, I’ve lost my faith.”

“Rule! What in?”

“In Christ. In Christianity. In religion. Everything. It’s gone.”

Sylvia said, at sea, that surely the Crisis needn’t—

“Oh, tschah! It’s not the Crisis. It happened long before that. It was Tangier. It was those Mohammedans.”

“Rule, you’re not going to turn Mohammedan?” But she thought, I mustn’t laugh; as always with Rule I want to shriek, as always I must treat him in deadly earnest.

“I wish to God I could! They wouldn’t have me. I’m not fit. To be a Mohammedan you have to believe. I don’t believe. I see it now. I thought I did, but I don’t. I haven’t got it in me.”

He plumped down on a seat; exhausted, Sylvia dropped down beside him. “Tell me, Rule.”

“It was these Mohammedans. It was going to Tangier.”

“But how?”

“Just this. When I saw these people worshipping in their mosques I saw what a really devout people looked like. I saw what faith looked like. And I knew in an instant I’d never seen it before. There isn’t any faith in this country. Our Christianity’s a sham.”

“Oh, surely, Rule—”

“It is, I tell you, it is! . . . Do you ever go to church?”

“Yes. Sometimes.”

“Well, what do you see there? A lot of people who’ve met to praise and rejoice in the greatest act of self-sacrifice there ever was. That’s the theory, their own theory. And what do they look like? Look at their faces. Do they look as if they were rejoicing? Not one of them. They look bored, fed-up, asleep. And why? Because in their hearts they don’t believe a word of it. Isn’t that true?”

Sylvia considered; there was a sort of truth about it.

“But, Rule, you wouldn’t have us jumping about like—like Harlem negroes?”

He stared at her under his flap of hair. “I don’t know that I wouldn’t. It would be better—”

“I’ll bet your Mohammedans didn’t do that in Tangier.”

“Tschah! Of course they didn’t . . . You have the most hopeless mind, you never seem able to get any general idea. . . Have you ever seen worship at a mosque?”

“N-no.”

“Then you’ve never seen worship at all. You don’t know what devotion means. Any more than I did. Sylvia, I stood in the Mosque of Omar in Tangier one evening and there was an atmosphere there—an aura I’ve never felt anything like it. They believed. There’s the whole thing. They believed. I’d never felt people believing before.”

Sylvia gazed towards the mounds of the trenches, towards the facade of Park Lane . . . This is beyond me. I have nothing to offer. I should be able to say something; I can’t. He’s marvellous, he’s unbeatable. Himself, always and only himself: Crises mean nothing to him—Munich or Godesberg, it’s all one.

“But, Rule—”

“I’d never felt people believing before. I knew as soon as I saw it—one does recognise greatness, you know; instantly—I knew as soon as I saw it that nobody believed in Christianity. I knew—this was the dreadful bit, Sylvia—I knew that I didn’t.” He swept back his unruly hair. “Sylvia, it was devastating. My whole world’s gone. Everything’s swept from under me. Where am I? I don’t know.”

And neither, thought Sylvia, do I. These continual mental switches—I can’t cope with them. If only I knew how serious this really is; if only I were quite sure that it isn’t just a fresh manifestation of the Ego of Rule Tweed, just another ice-cream tricycle, just the New Movement turned inside out. Is it real or is it—more Humbuggery? Should I comfort him or should I shake him? God knows.

“I’m lost, Sylvia, I’m at my wits’ end. I’m in despair. What am I to do?”

Despair, eh? Ah, but I’ve seen despair—once. The ghost-marbles of the Pincio, that dance-band jangling, the tinkle-clock, Nero on his pedestal: yes, I saw despair that night. This isn’t the same, this is sham, pose, self-conceit . . . Shaking, not sympathy.

“Couldn’t you think it over a bit, Rule? You’re all het-up; we all are just now; couldn’t you sort of take it easy till the sky clears a bit . . .”

“There’s nothing else in the sky. Not in my sky.”

And that’s literally true; he’s marvellous . . .

“Not”—she pointed to the yellow heaps from the trenches—“not all that?”

“What’s all that to me?”

Sylvia began to feel cross. “More than you think, perhaps. And what about—your father’s trouble?”

“How can I help that? If he likes to go and get himself tied up with a lot of beastly swindling Jews—”

“Axey isn’t a swindler!” Not cross this time—really angry.

“All Jews are swindlers.”

“They are not!” Oh, steady, Sylvia, steady; this is all wrong; don’t lose your temper; he doesn’t know about Conrad; leave the Jews out of it . . . “Never mind that. If you can’t think of your father when he’s in trouble, if you can’t think of your country when it’s in trouble, I can’t help you.”

“I tell you, I can’t think of anything but this.” He swept back his hair again. “For God’s sake, Sylvia, help me! I’m going mad.”

Not you! thought Sylvia. She studied him carefully for a minute. A flash of Pringle came—“What Rule wants is a woman.” Shrewd and sound, no doubt, but I can’t very well prescribe that. But there’s another thing he wants just about as badly.

“All right, I will help you . . . Quit thinking so much about yourself and go and do something.”

“Do something? Haven’t I been rushing about—”

“You haven’t done a thing since you left school. You go and get some work.”

“Work? My life work’s gone. I’ve no work to do.” Sylvia lost her temper with him finally. “You can sit and say that! Just now! . . . Heavens, Rule . . . It can’t be just caddishness—there isn’t enough caddishness in the world; it must be stupidity . . . Go and join the Air Force.”

“The Air Force! Me!”

“Yes, you—and the Air Force. You needn’t be a pilot. You can be a ground engineer—they’re wanted badly. You like engineering; you like aeroplanes. Didn’t I once see a model aeroplane in your room?”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“I don’t know. That’s for you to say.” Her temper mounted still higher, it flew away with her; she sprang up from the hard seat. “Rule, you’re a miserable creature; you never think of one single thing but yourself. All this Tangier business is just a bit more of it. And it’s time somebody told you so.”

“Sylvia! If you let me down—”

“Shut up! You’ve asked my help; you said, ‘What am I to do?’ Well, I’ve told you. Go and join the Air Force. And don’t speak to me again till you’ve done it.”

She stamped away from him, leaving him spreadeagled on the seat; she was shaking, sweating, with fury. Of all the self-centred, egotistical nincompoops! . . . And then she laughed. That’s one crisis settled anyway, that’s one of them done with . . .

And another exhibition of temperament by Miss Sylvia Savage. Another fly-out about nothing . . . And it was all—let’s face it—it was all really because he said that about beastly swindling Jews. That’s what got me. Because—can I trust Conrad or can’t I? Was he in this rotten business with Axey and Pelham or was he not? If I can’t trust Conrad—

Her laughter turned suddenly to tears.

XX

Friday 30th September 1938. Portia, with customary efficiency, had garaged her car in London; she produced it now and drove Sylvia down to Hambling. She drove with a calm aggressive mastery, fast but steadily; she was very smart in black and silver; again Sylvia thought admiringly, You do stand up to things! Newspaper headlines and placards roared at them, “PEACE”; some time in the first hour of that bright day the Munich Peace had achieved itself; we live in an age of miracles. A great many people were now in that first stage of relieved hysteria which presently would pass into an outraged indignation, a sense of having been had. How dare they frighten me like that! Thence it would be a short step from cheers and prostrations to recrimination and abuse. Already the food-hoarders were running to their tradesman to ask him to take back all those tins of soup and meat and vegetables, all those sacks of flour and potatoes and coal; “Of course, Mr. So-and-so, you’ll see how we were placed; I’m sure you’ll see your way—” And if Mr. So-and-so didn’t or couldn’t see his way then the custom would be removed to Mr. Such-and-such on the other side of the street. When the history of this Crisis comes to be written, thought Sylvia, some of us will look pretty wormish, pretty wormish . . . And what did you do in the Great Crisis, Sylvia? Snapped at people, made scenes, worried yourself sick about Conrad; you won’t show up any too well yourself. You didn’t actually run away but then you had nowhere to go . . .

Portia broke in suddenly on her meditations. “Pringle’s given me notice. Of course I expected that.”

“But—what about the Hall?”

“I’ve let it.”

“Quick work!”

“My tenant was quicker. Mr. Sleason had a signed agreement yesterday. The man is a wholesale grocer in Marylebone; he wanted to get out of London at once. Air Raids. I’ve let him the house furnished for six months.”

“Six months! But the war—”

“I know. But I think he deserves it. At any rate it is very convenient for me . . .”

At Brixter some enthusiasts had dug a trench across the green—an amateurish bit of work, they hadn’t even boarded up the sides. The Stag and Arrow had pasted strips of brown paper across the tap-room windows. As if anybody would bomb Brixter! But—like Rule—-all the Brixters and Eldings thought themselves Number One; like Rule, it was their Crisis. Sylvia caught a glimpse of Robin Galletly surveying the trench; he waved to them as they passed. Sylvia thought, “He’d have been for it, the poor mite!” Better that than life with Quashy? Oh, no; Quashy’s not so bad—even if it is baby-snatching as I told her . . . Suddenly she saw Twenty-One-Today in the Lehar Room in Vienna, crushing out cigarette after cigarette and staring, staring while the Sportspalast shrieked about “Benesh.” He was let off too. So far, so good, but—how long? Oh, do let’s somehow let them both off—for ever!

Humbug Hall was a huge silent vacancy tenanted only by Pringle, immaculate in his white coat and black trousers. He hadn’t turned a hair—of course he hadn’t. There was a perfect lunch ready—savoury eggs à la Pringle, little fruit tartlets, Pringle’s coffee. Clearing it away while Portia busied herself upstairs, Pringle said to Sylvia, “What price Macjudah?”

Sylvia lit a cigarette; now this time I must not allow myself to get annoyed.

“Do you mean Mr. Haase?”

“I mean our Axey. I told you you’d hear more of Humbug Hall, didn’t I?”

“You told me a great many things—mostly silly.”

“And you didn’t take the gypsy’s warning. Gypsies are Tightest when they sound silliest. I told you about the Bearded Lady anyway.”

“Too often.”

“Not often enough. I always knew he was a crook. You can always spot them. Whenever you see one of these Jesus-Christ faces, just say to yourself, ‘That’s a crook.’ I remember a chap we used to call Angelface Bagshot down in Sydney—”

“Pringle, don’t you think it’s time you stopped it?”

“Stopped what?”

“All these silly lies. They never were very funny; now they aren’t funny at all.”

“They’re not all lies. I told you that once before.”

“Well, stop them anyway.”

“It’s too late to reform me now, Sylvia. I’ve resigned.”

“So I heard. I can’t say I’m sorry. You’re fond of quotations—isn’t there one about sinking ships and a kind of rodent?”

“You think too much about rodents. It used to be mice in the nights . . . Are you down to give evidence in the Gunpowder Plot?”

“I don’t know. I suppose so. Are you?”

“Yes, but they probably won’t call me . . . The last time I was in Court was for running Singapore sovereigns into Chittagong. The Old Man of the Dundreary Castle—”

“I don’t want to hear about him . . . Look here, be sensible for once. What did happen down here?”

“Nothing much. One evening Master didn’t come home. I wasn’t worrying—I thought no doubt he’d be warm and comfortable where he was. Next morning the harness-bulls were on the door-step.”

“Harness—?”

“American for Police. They wanted to have a look-see. I said, ‘Over my dead body.’ So then they trotted out a warrant. We had a lovely game—upstairs, downstairs and in my lady’s chamber. Nothing was unearthed except about five hundred old Vie Parisiennes of Rule’s. I told you Rule—”

“Didn’t they find anything?”

“Two or three letters. I was coming to that. The Bearded Lady had carelessly left them lying in the drawer with his cheque-book. They didn’t let me read them, but I’m afraid they liked them all right. They said, ‘Do you know this handwriting?’ I said, No. They said, ‘Is it Mr. Haase’s?’ I said, Search me. It was, all right; but I don’t hold with helping the Police. They never helped me. Once in Colombo—”

“Was that all they found?”

“More or less. They asked me a lot of this-and-that about life in the Moated Grange. Was it extravagant and so on? I said my wages were always paid and that was all I cared about. They weren’t pleased with me. They said I’d better help them all I could. I said, ‘O.K., Torquemada—’”

“Pringle, you know you didn’t!”

“Well, words to that effect. I wasn’t going to tell them anything. Our Late Lamented used to call them the Unemployed and it was about the only true word he ever spoke. Try running a hotel if you don’t believe me . . . But I think these letters were bad, Sylvia.”

“Who for? Mr. Tweed?”

“Both of them. But worse for him. I think they were a Missing Link, like.”

“Oh, Pringle, it’s all just dreadful!”

“Don’t you believe it, Sylvia. These things have to happen.”

He picked up his tray and went out.

Sylvia had no opportunity for further conversation; Portia kept her on the run. But in a brief fortuitous interval she did bethink herself of her promise to Quashy. The tidying of Quashy’s room would in all probability be a full day’s work; however, one might as well get an idea of the scope and magnitude of the task.

Quashy’s room was in fact much less untidy than anyone could have suspected; clearly some vigorous and practised hand had already accomplished a great deal. Pringle? Probably—-indeed it could hardly have been any other. But there are things any Pringle might have missed; Sylvia began to poke round. She had never been in Quashy’s room before; like all the Humbug Hall bedrooms it was a continent with citadel wardrobes and cathedral chests-of-drawers; again in the mode of Humbug Hall, these were nearly all empty. They were, in fact, startlingly empty; Quashy was known to be richly provided with clothes, but there was nothing here except discards and remnants. Quashy must therefore have removed almost everything to “Livia’s” in London; sensible of her, of course, and trouble-saving, but that in itself made it odd—one didn’t expect these assistances from Quashy. Quite evidently she had not intended to come back—not for a long time, if ever. This was not an appalled and hasty flight following on her father’s arrest; this was planned permanent evacuation. Queer?

Sylvia came to the monumental dressing-table; pulled at a drawer. It stuck; something was jammed in the grooves. With some difficulty she thrust in a hand; the something proved to be a little cardboard carton—long, thin, narrow. It bore the name of a London tobacconist; it was evidently the container of a cigarette holder; it was evidently the container of that extra-long extra-irritating green holder Quashy had acquired some time in August, perhaps on that birthday after which she was named. Sylvia could remember its first appearance and Quashy sprawling in an armchair sucking at it with her skirts all over the place, very Jermyn-Street indeed. (“Sweetness, don’t you like it? Too, too Café-de-Paris.”) . . . Yes, that was what it was.

Sylvia crumpled the cardboard in her hand, closed the drawer, saw that a little piece of paper had fallen from the cardboard to the floor. It was a fragment of rich lordly note-paper—in texture not unlike the note-paper of Humbug Hall itself but carrying no heading. But it might have been a bit of the Humbug Hall paper with the heading cut away. On it was written in neat capitals “With love from René.”

Sylvia stared at it idly for a few moments without particular interest; then a mild speculation asserted itself. Now, who would “René” be? No “René” had ever appeared or been heard of at Humbug Hall; but then, of course, Quashy lived a glittering life of cocktails and sherry-parties and the Berkeley Buttery and “Livia’s” and what-not in London, of which little or nothing was known; such an existence might well contain a hundred René’s any one of whom might send Quashy an offensively suitable green cigarette-holder with his love. Could it be a love-name for Robin? Improbable, to say the least of it . . . Sylvia made a mental note of the name “René” for future guidance, crumpled up her findings and threw them into the waste-paper basket on the landing.

On the way downstairs she encountered Pringle carrying a tray of polished silver to be packed. She said, for no reason she could think of, “I suppose it was you who tidied Quashy’s room so nicely.”

Pringle set down his tray. “I did give it the once-over. It needed it. Untidy child, Quashy.”

“She seems to have taken everything to London with her.”

He met her gaze. “Two wardrobe trunks, four suitcases, two hat-boxes, a dressing-bag and a what-not. That was the inventory.”

“I wish I had as much . . . She gave me a message for you—something silly about a password. Tickety-boo, I think.”

“Does it convey anything to you, Sylvia?”

“That wasn’t the intention.”

“Well, it doesn’t convey anything to me. It’s a sort of phrase some people use instead of ‘O.K.’ There was an old Eurasian in Tuticorin was always using it—we called him Tickety. He used to keep a tame hyaena and one day——”

Sylvia continued her journey downstairs.

*  *  *

Later in the evening, on the wireless, there was Mr. Chamberlain returning in triumph from Munich. A special broadcast from Downing Street; crowds roaring, mounted police, Mr. Malcolm Macdonald and Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd climbing about on window-sills. Everyone just a little exalté—including Mr. Chamberlain himself. He and Hitler had signed some extraordinary document, it was Peace in Our Time, a Prime Minister had again brought Peace with Honour to Downing Street. And could you blame him? If he had come back daft and dancing reels it wouldn’t have been surprising. Nor, my Downing Street crowd, can you roar loud enough or abase yourselves sufficiently, for here—my goodness!—is a man. He hath raised up a mighty salvation for us in the house of His servant Neville. Three cheers for Chamberlain! . . . Yes, and in a week’s time, thought Sylvia, how many of these sycophants will be back-biting and snarling and whining about their Honour? Never mind, Neville—we’ll remember. I’ll remember and Conrad will remember and Robin Galletly will remember and Twenty-One-Today in Vienna will remember. The young people will remember that there was one Leader—he didn’t call himself a Leader, he just led—who didn’t think of them as so much cannon-fodder . . . The broadcast ceased; Sylvia came out of her dream. Portia said, “What a wonderful moment this must be for his wife! One almost envies.”

Sylvia said, “Funny; that’s just what I was going to say.” But the tears sprang up in her eyes. There was Portia, sitting so cold and magnificent in a brand-new evening frock—a handsome woman if a little unapproachable but no doubt she was once less Arctic; and her husband was a man who took elfchens to the Island of Port Cros and pawed about her secretaries on Ashridge Common and sold Official Secrets. Who said marriage was a lottery?

And what about my marriage? thought Sylvia. Am I going to marry Conrad Haase—that is, if he asks me again? I think, yes; but—should I? He is a Jew—back we go to the old story. He is a Jew—not only a foreigner but an Oriental; we are descended from different sons of Noah. He is a Jew; a dark creature, moving in an underground labyrinth, full of secrets he would never tell me. I should never know him. There would be a huge piece of Conrad I should never get hold of. His handsomeness, his brilliance, his gifts, perhaps his heart—I should have all these; but the Jew part of him I should never have. How big would it be? . . . Should I? . . . Should I?

I might know if I could see him. But where is he? Oh Conrad, Conrad, how amazingly real you are at this moment. You are more real than the Crisis—than all the Crises put together, Rule’s, Portia’s, Pelham’s, Europe’s. You are more real than Chamberlain, more real than Hitler. You are more real than me myself . . .

*  *  *

Portia had valiantly intended to spend the week-end at work and to be back in London first thing on Monday morning. But, what with one thing and another, in the end she and Sylvia spent most of that week-end in bed—as did many worthy people throughout the British Isles. It was Wednesday afternoon before they motored back to the Grosvenor Hotel; already it was possible to forget that a Crisis had ever been. Perhaps it was not so forgettable in Czecho-Slovakia where the Germans had already occupied four of their five areas.

The Bearded Lady or the results of his activities were not so easily kept out of mind. The Crisis had crushed him out of the newspapers all through the week, but on the Sunday one or two of them remembered him. One gave him a headline—“Sold Secrets Case: Ministry Official’s Mansion,” and supported this by a recognisable photograph of Humbug Hall. On the Sunday afternoon it seemed to Sylvia that there were a number of persons skulking, dodging and peering around and behind the paddock hedge. She pointed them out to Pringle who was, as usual, unmoved. “You be thankful,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for the crisis we’d have had charabancs. We ought to put up a board at the gate with ‘Teas Ninepence’ and ‘Ladies’ and Gents’ Cloakrooms.’ Then it would be like the good old days at Ye Olde Standing Dragon—that’s about all the business I ever did there.” But Sylvia felt mortified. She was mortified still further on Monday morning when the village constable from Brixter appeared asking for Miss Savage. How long was she staying at Hambling; when was she returning to London; what would be her address there? He made laborious entries in his note-book and shambled away again. Pringle, also interrogated, said, “We’re what’s called under observation, Sylvia, that’s what it is; they’re afraid we’ll run away. If they only knew; I wouldn’t miss the Gunpowder Plot for anything.”

The Monday and Tuesday papers recalled Pelham and Axey to their readers; several of them had discovered that Pelham’s wife and her Secretary had returned from Vienna—contriving, without a word said, to suggest that the purpose of their visit there had been somehow discreditable. Three of them had Sylvia’s name—in three different forms but all three recognisable. And now, on the Wednesday afternoon, when Portia had put away her car and she and Sylvia were walking along by the balustrade in front of the Grosvenor Hotel, a young man in a waterproof rose suddenly from nowhere, said suavely, “One moment, please!” and clicked a large expanding camera. Sylvia, a little in front of Portia, got the full brunt of the exposure; while she was furiously contemplating the possibility of crashing the young man over the head with her umbrella, he clicked at her again smiled sweetly, raised his hat and went away. She said to Portia, “He got us, I’m afraid. Me anyway.”

Portia said wearily that it didn’t matter.

At the Grosvenor the Unemployed were to the fore again; the moment one got upstairs. Standing darkly in the corridor, ready to pounce and pouncing instantly; a young uniformed constable with a long blue envelope and that pleasantly authoritative air that characterises the Metropolitan Police. The younger, the more authoritative.

“Miss Savage?”

“Yes.”

“Receive this, please.”

Crossly Sylvia snatched at the envelope; he said, “Thank you, Miss,” smiled like the cameraman, saluted and went off to his next business . . . And I do think your London Police are just won-der-ful . . . More crossly still, Sylvia ripped open the envelope. As anticipated.

“In the Metropolitan Police District; Before the Court of Summary Jurisdiction sitting at the Police Court, Bow Street . . . Pelham Tweed . . . charged that he . . . having in his possession or control information obtained owing to his position . . . office under His Majesty . . . communicated that information person unauthorised . . . contrary form of Statute in such case made and provided . . . And it appearing to me; . . you are likely to give material evidence therein . . . you are therefore hereby summoned to appear . . . Court of Summary Jurisdiction sitting at the Police Court at Bow Street . . . District first aforesaid . . . Monday the tenth day of October 1938 at the hour of ten in the forenoon . . . testify what you know . . . Signed Illegible, One of the Magistrates of the Police Courts of the Metropolis”. . .

So! Monday next. And Bow Street. Ugh!

But in the sitting-room were other letters for Sylvia, sent on by George Cadman from the Bank—her first since Vienna. Several long screeds from Lettuce; Lettuce had spent the Crisis in a Paradise of eager service—assembling respirators, fitting them on all the dear droll people, going from house to house with Boy Scouts, fussing, fretting, having the time of her life. She had become consequential, affairée, in-the-know on the strength of it. But Sylvia put her letters aside without much scrutiny, for there was another letter. In that Rome handwriting. A-ah!

“Flagg’s Hotel, W.C.2.” (Never heard of it.) “Dearest Sylvia, I must see you. At once. Will you be outside the Café Royal in Regent Street at six-thirty tomorrow, Wednesday, evening. A stupid place to meet, but I can’t think of a better and perhaps it will do. Grüssgott! Conrad.”

Perhaps it will do! Perhaps it will! And six-thirty today—in two hours and fourteen and a half minutes. Thank heaven we came back. Conrad! . . .

The universe burst into song. Lettuce and the Unemployed danced a tarantella on the table-cloth.

XXI

“So you are real, after all!”

“I’m real, Sylvia.”

Yes, you’re real; I know that in every nerve in my body. You don’t look quite so English as you did in Rome; on the other hand you look—as you did not look there—reliable, familiar, strong. You look a friend. But—not so English. Your mouth is a little too finely cut, your eyes are a little too beautiful for London. But am I going to call these things defects? You are Conrad.

“Conrad, what can I say?”

“There’s nothing to be said, Sylvia . . . It must be awful for you with Mrs. Tweed . . .”

“My dear, I never think of him. It may be wrong of me, but I don’t. I just think of Axey.”

“And I. I didn’t think I was coming here to find my father in prison.”

“Have you seen him?”

“Yes. He’s ill.”

“Does he tell you—anything?”

He shook his head; he said something that was drowned in the roar of the Regent Street traffic.

“Conrad, we can’t stand here and talk in the street.”

“Well, come inside and have a drink.”

“No. Too noisy. Where can we get quiet? The only place I can think of is the top of a bus. If we take one going towards the City it’s sure to be empty at this hour.”

As if in illustration a 15 bus came grinding to the kerb, its upper deck a glass palace of vacancy.

“Come on, Conrad! It goes to East Ham. God knows where that is, but it’s miles.”

He followed her obediently up the stairs, saying something unheeded about a taxi. She bustled forward to the front seats; the bus lurched off on its long journey.

“Now! Tell me all about it, Conrad. You got home all right, of course.”

“I got home. I don’t know if you could call it all right.” He began to describe his journey. “I thought about you most of the time.” From Paris he had cabled to Elding; at Folkestone they gave him the reply. It said, “See Leishman immediately on arrival Father.” (“Leishman is our solicitor, Sylvia.”) He had seen Leishman and then of course it had all been made clear.

“Conrad! It must have been the most dreadful shock.”

It was, of course, he said. But in Sylvia the idea leapt up that though it had been a shock, of course, it hadn’t been just altogether a surprise; it hadn’t, at least, been incomprehensible. It hadn’t been unthinkable to Conrad—as it would have been to most sons—that he should find his father in jail. Or was it only that the Jew, man’s enemy, was always prepared for anything so long as it was bad? Her heart began to beat. Questions, questions—horrible questions; but I shall have to ask them . . . Let it all go? No, if we’re going to talk about marriage, if we can contemplate marriage, I can’t stay in the dark about this.

“Look here, Conrad, we must get this straight. What do you think about it all?”

“I think it’s bad, Sylvia. Bad for my father, I mean.”

“You mean—?”

“I think they—did it.” (Oh, Conrad, Conrad, do you know they did it?)

“You think they were really both in it together? And Axey—I can’t call him anything but Axey—was cheating the way they say?”

“Yes, I think so, Sylvia.”

The bus careered into the Haymarket, throwing them against each other.

“You see, Sylvia, my father was always desperately anxious to help our people. When we were in Vienna he used to give to all sorts of charities. Then after he was driven out——”

Vienna! . . . Lippmann . . . Yes, Conrad, after he was driven out?

“He still tried to help. He sent all the money he could.”

“He sent it to you.”

There was a little silence; the bus was held up at the lights in Trafalgar Square; for quite a number of seconds Sylvia stared into the stupid face of a girl in another bus a few inches away.

“Yes. A good deal of it.”

“How?”

“Oh—there were ways and means.”

“And you—distributed it?”

“Yes.”

“And was that why they put you in the Elizabeth-strasse prison?”

He was quite startled. “Good heavens, no! If they’d found out about that—Well, I don’t know what they’d have done to me, but I wouldn’t be sitting here now. No, no. They put me in prison just as I told you—I never knew why and neither I believe did they.”

“Perhaps they did?”

“Oh, no. I wouldn’t have got off with the Elizabeth-strasse then. But that was what made me so angry—all my work stopped, the charity work as well.”

Another long silence . . . Well, come on; “out of this nettle danger, we pluck”. . . Out with it!

“Conrad, there’s a question I just must ask you. Once I’ve asked it, just forget I ever did. Did you know where the money was coming from?”

“You mean, did I know how my father was making it?”

“Just that.”

“I see . . . I didn’t think you’d ask me that, Sylvia. I did not know. I knew he was doing business in London; he never told me just what and I never asked him. Why should I?”

“No reason. Of course not. Forget I asked it, as I said.” But thank God for that anyway: thank God.

Another silence; then he said. “What I was doing in Vienna . . . they never found it out; that wasn’t why they ran me in. But it was one reason why I stayed on in Vienna after my father went.”

“You didn’t tell me that in Rome.” It slipped out before she could stop it. Because that was what her whole being was shouting out, so loud that it almost drowned Conrad’s voice, almost drowned the rattle of the bus. You didn’t tell me that in Rome; you didn’t tell me a word about this in Rome . . . “I wish you had, Conrad.”

He gave her a long look. “What difference could it have made?”

“None. But—you were telling me about yourself. All about yourself, I thought. You might have told me that you had been helping the Jews in Vienna. There wasn’t anything wrong about it . . . Why didn’t you, Conrad?”

“I don’t know, I don’t remember. I suppose it just didn’t come up. I must have meant to tell you.”

But in the long silence—the longest yet—Sylvia thought, I’m not so sure. You’re not a casual headstrong person; you think out your actions. You didn’t tell me because you thought you wouldn’t. There wasn’t any reason—that’s what made it all the worse. It was just you not to tell me. It was a secret you were having from me. That’s how it would always be; secrets, secrets. Nothing bad nothing disgraceful, but just secrets about you, just things I wasn’t to know. And like all wives, I’d keep on finding them out; God won’t let people have secrets, they come out—as this one has come out now . . . No, Conrad; no . . . I’d never know what he was up to: I won’t marry him. . .

“And yet, Conrad, and yet—you sent me to see these Lippmanns.”

Startled again. “I’d almost forgotten that. Did you see them?”

“Yes. They’re alive if you want to know and fairly well and very disgruntled and frightened to death. Or they were when I saw them. And when I saw them I thought they were very strange associates for you and I wondered what on earth you could have had in common. Now I see.”

He said gently, “What do you see, Sylvia?”

“Well, of course—they were in the same game as you were.”

“That’s true.”

“And it wasn’t just all charities, Conrad.”

“No; it wasn’t all charities.”

“Political?”

“Some of it.”

“Anti-Nazi?”

“Yes.”

“I see . . . And you didn’t tell me that in Rome either.”

He was getting uneasy. “It wasn’t my secret.”

“Then why send me to see these people.”

“I wanted to know how they were getting on, I wanted to know they were all right.” He burst suddenly into excited speech. “Quite apart from all that business, Lippmann was my friend. I daresay he looked a queer sort of chap when you saw him last month, but there was a time when he would have delighted you. His wife, too—she was such a smart woman! He was a charming fellow—witty and gay, the best company; and he played magnificently. He played the cello at the Opern. You know what that means—”

Sylvia was seeing a cold draughty landing in Vienna, a half-open door that wasn’t going to open any further, a dirty rather nasty little man who giggled horridly; a smell of stale living; a terrified woman who had once been “smart” and now couldn’t keep her stockings up.

“It’s all very well, Conrad; I think you should have told me. Why didn’t you?”

“As I’ve said. It wasn’t my secret.”

“Then why send me there at all?”

“Because I wanted to know, if possible, that Moritz was all right. I mean, still even—alive.”

“You weren’t afraid he’d tell me about you?”

“I knew he wouldn’t.” This time it slipped out of him. And as disastrously . . . Yes, you knew he wouldn’t; you knew. Because you were a Jew and he was a Jew and between the two of you, your Jew secrets were safe as Freemasonry. He wouldn’t tell about you, and you wouldn’t tell about him . . . It would always be like that. There would always be something I wasn’t to know. And if there was no such thing I’d imagine that there was. Always.

He put his hand suddenly and unexpectedly upon hers.

“You’re vexed, Sylvia; you’re hurt. Don’t be.”

“It’s not quite that, Conrad. Only it wasn’t, it wasn’t—us somehow. I thought that night in Rome—I thought it had put us beyond secrets.”

“And so it did. I’d have told you—some time.”

“I don’t know, Conrad . . . For God’s sake don’t think I’m the sort of person who always wants to poke into other people’s privacies. I don’t, and I can’t stand it when people do it to me. I know people can’t live together without keeping something under their hats. But I don’t like locked rooms in the house—they frighten me.”

He smiled. “What you mean is you don’t mind locked rooms so long as you have the key.”

“Then they’re not locked. I don’t know—I’m expressing myself badly—but I thought in Rome you’d told me all about yourself. Now I find you—didn’t.”

“We hadn’t much time, Sylvia.”

“No, but we were moving fast—as you said yourself. There was time for that.”

“I told you everything that mattered.”

“How do I know?”

The bus was halted, its engine throbbing quietly, at the end of Cannon Street. In a sudden revulsion of feeling, hating the thing, hating this moving house of glass, Sylvia jumped up.

“Let’s get off here. We can get another 15 back.”

Her movement was too quick for him; he had to follow her, protesting.

“But, Sylvia! I’ve such a lot to say to you.”

“You can say it on the way home. I’m not going any further.”

No, I’m not going any further. On the bus or otherwise.

*  *  *

“I meant to tell you, Sylvia, I’m getting that practice.”

There was a better atmosphere on the homeward bus; there must have been some sort of hoodoo on that other one; the conductor had a nasty face; everything went wrong on it. Here it was warmer, kinder; but oh! I feel so cross, unsettled, miserable.

“I meant to tell you, Sylvia, I’m getting that practice.”

“Are you getting it from your father? If so, I don’t think you ought to take it.”

“Sylvia! What can you mean?. . . Oh, that’s nonsense. My father has a great deal of money, quite apart from—that.”

“How do you know?” (“All Jews are swindlers,” said Rule; out of the mouths of Rules and Pringles—) “You don’t know how he may have made it. Conrad, I love Axey, I hate to say anything against him; but—”

“But, Sylvia, if I don’t take the practice, how are we going to get married?”

“Are we going to get married?”

She saw his lip quiver, was impelled instantly by her whole being to melt to him, fought down the impulse.

“But, Sylvia, you promised. In Rome.”

On the roof of St. Peter’s; looking down into the Piazza; “After last night I know what you are; I know you’re splendid and brave and absolutely a friend and——+” Oh, why did Rome ever end; why aren’t we there now instead of in this rotten bus in horrible Fleet Street?

“I don’t think I promised, Conrad. I said ‘Wait’.”

“Well, we’ve waited.”

“Oh, nonsense, Conrad; we haven’t even seen each other. There’s been an interval of time but we’re just as we were at St. Peter’s.” (I wish we were.) “We must wait a bit longer.” (But—what’s the good of waiting, off-putting, fiddling with it? If you’re not going on with Conrad, finish him! . . . I—I can’t.)

He said with a white face, shaking up and down absurdly with the motion of the bus, “I love you, Sylvia I told you that in Rome. I’ll tell you it again now. A hundred times if you like. And you know you love me really——”

“I don’t know anything of the kind.” But I never felt so silly, so weak, so irresolute, so flustered in all my life. “Honestly, Conrad, I’m not playing shilly-shally; you’ve frightened me a little; you must give me time.”

And she thought, If he says again, ‘It’s because I’m a Jew,’ what will I say? But mercifully he didn’t think of it or if he thought of it didn’t say it. Instead he said rather wearily, “I’ll give you all my life. But as I told you at St. Peter’s, how long is life these days?”

“Oh, come, Conrad. Munich! It’s over.”

“For the time being. But you’ve read Mein Kampf? Yes? Well, then—”

The bus was pulled up at the Jermyn Street lights; ahead was the blazing kaleidoscope of Piccadilly circus; a flaming tempest of colours, a roaring waterfall of noise . . . If only we were walking in the quiet Pincio; I could say things then; it’s impossible in London. This hideous great pandemonium of a town; it’s a pity they don’t bomb it.

“I’m tired, Conrad. Let’s get off. I think I’ll take a taxi to the hotel.”

His face whitened further but he followed her off the bus.

“Have a drink somewhere with me first. Coffee. Anything.”

“I don’t think so, Conrad. I’m done in, really. I don’t know when I’ve felt so tired.”

His lip quivered again, pathetically. “I’m sorry it’s been such a rotten evening. I didn’t mean—”

Oh, neither did I, neither did I! Fight down the impulse to throw your arms round his neck and shriek out, “Darling, darling”; (like Quashy!) “drinks, coffee, marriage, anything on earth to please you.” Say instead, coldly, “It’s this awful case. It’ll be better after that.”

“Yes . . . Well, when am I to see you again? How soon, I mean.”

Tomorrow! First thing! No, no—not that. Remain cold and considering.

“Are you to give evidence at Bow Street on Monday?”

He shook his head. “I’ve no evidence to give—except about the money coming to Vienna. They may want that later, our solicitor says, not now. I could only tell them that my father is the best and kindest man in the world. They don’t want to hear that.”

“They’ll let you come and watch. Anybody can.”

“I don’t want to. I don’t want to see him tortured. I won’t be there.”

“No; I can see that.” Be thankful for this mercy; he won’t be there on Monday. “Well, let’s leave it over till after all that.”

“There’ll be a trial, you know, later. This is only Police Court.”

“I know. Why is the law so damnably slow! . . . Conrad, let’s leave it till after that too.” (Because after that I’ll be going away, I’ll be searching for a job again; “board in exchange for English conversation” after all, maybe; but not in Italy or Germany this time; I’ll go to Peru or New Guinea.)

“I think you’re making a mistake, Sylvia.”

Perhaps I am, perhaps I am; but this dreadful city makes such a noise I can’t think clearly; there are so many coloured lights I can’t see straight. I must think clearly, I must see straight for hours and hours and hours

“No, Conrad . . . We can’t hurry things.”

“We’re not hurrying them. It’s all done. It was all done in Rome.”

Perhaps; perhaps not . . .

“Call that taxi for me like a dear”—or I’ll fall into your arms and burst out crying.

He called the taxi, she said something and got in. The last she saw of him, he was standing on the kerb, a drab dark figure against the scarlets and ultramarines, a little puzzled still, wondering what had gone wrong, why it wasn’t still St. Peter’s. Already a harlot in fox furs was sidling artfully towards him from the shadows of Jermyn Street. He’ll say “No” to her easily enough; but what sort of harpies are sidling upon him out of the Jermyn Streets of his mind? I’ve left him to these—I whom he called “absolutely a friend.” She cried to herself all the way home in the taxi.

. . . And so to bed. And time, too; I was never so tired in my life. What an extraordinary evening! Not the very least what I expected. I expected to be so delighted to see him again that I just wouldn’t think of anything else; I expected to be warm and happy and just forgetful of everything outside our two selves. I’d looked forward to it, I’d cried for it. And it turns out—this!

I don’t like locked rooms in a house. There would always be locked rooms in Conrad’s house. “Room after room, I hunt the house through We inhabit together . . . Such suites to explore, such alcoves to importune!” But Elizabeth Barrett was very unlocked; not so Conrad. Not his fault; his race is not mine. They are a dark people, the Jews, with a strange Leviticus. No, no; it wouldn’t do . . .

You fool, you fool! It would, it would, it would!

XXII

At Bridstead School, in Sussex, they were just getting over the Crisis—and rather pluming themselves on the way they had weathered it. Those staggered holidays had turned up trumps; Bridstead hadn’t been caught, like most schools, in the throes of “getting back”—they had been settled in for nearly a month, they were entrenched and solid. The parents had behaved—for parents—remarkably well; with few exceptions they had decided that their offspring were as safe from bombardment at Bridstead as anywhere else and had refrained from insisting on their removal, either en bloc or as individuals, to West Wales. Two of the housemaids had bolted to their mothers in Nottingham; the remainder of the staff had stood fast. On the whole, therefore, Bridstead could pride itself on having lived up to the highest expectations. The Head was pleased with it.

But now that it was all over, now of course the strain became apparent in the results of shaken nerves. Breakages in the kitchen went up by twenty-five per cent; the Matron gave Cateson Minor Eno’s in mistake for bicarbonate of soda; Mr. Garrow twice forgot to take evening Prep. It was not therefore thought unduly surprising when, on the morning of Thursday the 6th of October, Mr. Caldecott the Games Master knocked over his tea at breakfast, fell on the stairs and appeared at morning school in his slippers.

But Mr. Caldecott had had a shock much worse than the Crisis because much more personal. He received it in his morning paper; and in the forenoon break he took his morning paper to the Head.

“Look at this, sir!”

The Head looked. He saw a blurred photograph of two women, the younger one a little in front of the other. She had apparently been walking swiftly, for her legs were in a position theoretically impossible for human legs to assume; but she was staring straight into the camera; presumably if you knew her, it would be at least a tolerable likeness. A good-looking girl, too. Beneath the photograph was printed “Sold Secrets Secretary. Miss Savage (left) walking with Mrs. Pelham Tweed (right) in London yesterday.”

Basil said excitedly, “That’s her!”

The Head said feebly, “Dear me!” He was thinking, Surely she is a most unfortunate young woman. First she gets mixed up with What-d’you-call-’ems and now it’s spies. Really most unfortunate. He said again, “Dear me, Caldecott; are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure, sir. It’s absolutely her. And anyway—look, it says ‘Miss Savage’.”

The Head thought, “Bother!” He decided to be firm; he hated being firm.

“You know, Caldecott—you know, I’d keep out of this if I were you.”

Basil’s honest eyes grew round; the idea hadn’t occurred to him.

“How can I, sir? I-I’ve found her.”

Unfortunately, thought the Head, you have.

“I-I’ve got to stand by her, sir, haven’t I?”

Grudgingly the Head admitted it. “I suppose—”

“I don’t see what else I can do. And anyway, of course—” he recalled himself—“I want to do it. Why, I’ve been hunting for her for months. You know, sir—”

The Head knew—only too well. He said rather testily, “Well, what do you propose to do?”

“I thought, Sir, if I could perhaps have the week-end off. Cleethorpe could take the Senior game on Saturday; the match with Mickleham was cancelled owing to the Crisis—”

“Yes, yes, I know . . . Well, of course you can have the week-end off. But, my dear fellow,”—he picked up the newspaper again—“are you really any better off than you were? It only says ‘In London yesterday’, I suppose there was a ten to one chance that she was in London all along. London’s a big—”

“Oh, no, sir! She’s gone abroad on some newspaper work.” (Ah, faithful Lettuce! Ah, simple Basil!) “And anyway, here’s the photograph. I ought to be able to spot where it was taken.”

The Head peered again at the smudgy, fog-ridden thing.

“I don’t know. It’s a street, apparently a main street. That’s a bus, isn’t it; pity we can’t read the number. They seem to be walking along past some large building with stone railings in front of it. It might be the Athenaeum. It might be almost anywhere.”

But Basil refused to be depressed.

“Oh, I don’t know, sir! It’s Central London anyway—somewhere. That’s a lot narrower than all Europe—which it was before.”

The Head sighed, handed back the paper, made one more attempt.

“Honestly, Caldecott—of course, I don’t want to prevent you if you’re determined—but honestly, I should keep out of this. It’s a nasty sort of business; there’s bound to be a trial—”

Basil’s face suddenly blazed with light. “Of course there is! I never thought of that. That’s where I’ll find her. Find about her anyway.”

The Head gave it up.

Young Waters had the news that evening—first as usual.

“Massed games tomorrow, you chaps.”

“Oh? . . . Why? . . . Who says? . . .”

“It’s orders. Caldy’s going up to Town for a binge.”

“How d’you know?”

“I just know.”

“He isn’t going on a binge, then. He’s going about a law case. I heard him telling Matron.”

“That’s what he told her, you sap. But I bet he gets chucked out of the Palladium tomorrow night. Whoopee!”

Poor Basil!

XXIII

Monday 10th October 1938. Ordeal by Bow Street.

The place of torture lurked far up Wellington Street, under the facade of Covent Garden, parked behind a barricade of fruit-vans, barrows, lorries. “That’s it, Miss—the big grey building.” One went first to the wrong entrance; “No, Miss, the Court’s the next door up the street; on the corner.” One might have known; it was here that the crowd was gaping. There were men with cameras again—those big expanding boxes; but they didn’t click them at Sylvia. Apparently I’m not news this morning; that’s something anyway.

One had imagined gloom inside—soot, cobwebs, a Dickensian grime. But instead there was a Tube-station freshness—shining tiles and distemper and well-washed stonework. A dear of a Policeman with a smile as shiny as the tiles.

“I’m a witness, officer. This case.”

“Oh yes, Miss.” He looked at the summons. “That’ll be Number One Court. But I wouldn’t go in yet, Miss. They’ll be at the drunks an’ the gay girls for another twenty minutes yet. Take a little walk and come back—that’s what I sh’d do.”

But Sylvia was more afraid of the street, of the hostile gapers, of the great round eyes of the clicking cameras. She said, “Oh, thanks, I think I’ll just go in.” He beamed on her.

“Right y’are, Miss. Whatever y’ like.” He pushed open swing doors, Sylvia walked along a corridor, crept mouse-like into the court.

It was very still in there—and stiflingly hot. It was a smaller room than she had expected and it was crowded with people most of whom were standing along the back wall. She pushed into a place amongst them . . . The Magistrate was a handsome man, not young, not old, with a reddish beard. He sat aloft on a chair padded with green leather; lying back he stared at the ceiling and played idly with a silver pencil. He was terribly bored, poor man. There was a policewoman with a chin like Mussolini’s and the thick hooked nose of an Afridi; frightening as only very plain women can be . . . Behind the Bench there were bookcases filled with legal books; high on the wall a lion and unicorn; between the dock and the Bench was a complication of pens like the yard of a cattle-mart . . . It was hot! . . . Along the back of the Court were the spectators—a gallery of unhealthy underworld faces, mostly youngish men with plastered sticky-looking hair and shouldered-and-waisted blue overcoats in herring-bone serge. A whole squad of Police constables—all very young, all very nice; good wholesome faces to set against that gallery of evil. The one next Sylvia leant back against the wall and said to Sylvia with the kindest smile, “I’m playin’ Rugger this afternoon; want to keep meself slack; not too easy.” She asked him where he played and he said, Forward usually, but he liked full back best. Not quite the conversation I had expected here . . . The Unemployed! But so nice, such dears! . . .

In and out of the dock a succession of queer little drabs; baby faces with woolly hair; hawk faces with velvet hats. Name? Joyce or Fay or Ivy. Occupation? “Er”—hopefully—“dancer.” But, “Guilty, y’r worship”; Guilty, my lord,” “Guilty”, All in the day’s work! “You’ve been here before?” “Yes, y’r Worship; five previous convictions.” Glib little creatures, far beyond caring a damn for anything. Interesting; honest; cretinous.

The last of them drifted twittering away to pay her fine; Redbeard on the bench leant forward and began a long muttering conversation with his clerk. There was a sudden stir in the doorway; Dante Alighieri swung into the court followed by—yes, Bligh of the Bounty, straight from the film, and the Spirit of Israel. They wore no gowns, but in their striding assurance you knew at once who they were. Counsel! They bowed perfunctorily and sat down in their places in the cattle-pens; very big chiefs! Of the three Sylvia knew only Dante; he was Sleathe K.C. for the prosecution, he would prosecute at the Old Bailey as well, he was merciless, not quite sure even yet that Sylvia didn’t know more than she said. Bligh presumably was for Pelham Tweed; he sat there looking contemptuously quarter-deck; he would have liked to flog somebody. The dark pale Jew—God sustain him!—would be for Axey . . . A dozen fresh spectators fought their way into the back of the court; the Police could be seen pushing back a horde of the unsuccessful. Morbid brutes! Yet, of course, it’s interesting—and important. Traitors! We are here to try traitors . . . The atmosphere thickened; incredibly, it grew hotter still—suffocating.

“Tweed!” “Haase!” They came in . . . I’m going to faint; no, I’m not—don’t be a fool! . . . Pelham, the horrid little beast, was as beautiful as ever; he might have stepped straight from Ashridge Common; a perfect suit of dove-grey, a perfect tie, beard silky as silky; jaunty, unrepentant, sneering. Ich Dien. “England, I love thee—love thou me.” “I donate the relic of myself to England, this green merry-hearted—“Do you, then? Humbug of Humbugs; all is Humbug . . . Then Axey; but—oh, Axey! He looked like death; his cheeks had fallen down on each side of his face like shutters; his eyes were a faded slate-colour sunk in patches of mottled sepia—more like oysters than eyes. They needn’t bother to punish him; they’ve killed Axey already . . . “Tweed” . . . “Haase.”

No Conrad. Thank God for that.

A red-haired policeman with a chubby face said loudly, “All witnesses out of the Court, please. All witnesses outside.” He caught Sylvia’s eye; she slunk miserably to the door. They might have told me that before; now I’m made conspicuous. A row of spotty young-men’s faces under plastered hair, staring at her; the Rugger Policeman smiling kindly . . . Out in the corridor there was a nondescript huddle of creatures picked out with Policemen; but a very good-looking young man in an excellent blue suit smiled to Sylvia. Who—why, it’s Pringle! He said to her, “Hello, Sylvia! So here we all are.” But for once he didn’t seem talkative. She said, “What are they going to ask you?” and he whispered back, “What I told you. Our extravagant ways; Macjudah’s visits; those ber-luddy letters.” But he seemed to have something on his mind; he relapsed into silence. She said, “Isn’t there a waiting-room somewhere?” and he, “Yes, but it’s more fun here.” Not at all agreeing with him, she clung unenterprisingly to his side. He was queer; he was Humbuggery—he was the personification of Humbuggery—but at least one knew him . . .

But Axey’s face. Oh, Axey’s face. “My-son; Conerat”. . .

“Sylvia Savage!”

At last. Pringle said, “Once more into the breach, dear friends, and patted her shoulder; he set her moving with a little push. Pushed into action, she went forward. A blast of stew and heat thrust against her—almost as bad as the Lippmann’s. Young men’s spotty faces, teeth like horses, mufflered necks, shiny blue overcoats; Red-beard squinting at her from his high chair, Dante squinting up from his cattle-pen; Dark Israel, his chin on his hand, assessing her from afar. They are sitting on that seat in front of the dock, but I daren’t look at them. Police, Police, Police; faces, breath, suffocation; it all went spinning round; it all steadied.

. . Swear by Almighty God . . . evidence I give before this Court . . . truth . . . truth . . . truth . . . so help me God.”

“Your name is Sylvia Savage?”

“Yes.”

“And you were employed as Secretary at Hambling Hall by the wife of the first defendant?”

“Yes.”

“When did you first go there, Miss Savage?”

“Towards the end of last July.” Nothing alarming in all this. Dante knew what he was going to ask; she knew what he was going to ask; Dante knew what she was going to answer; she knew what she was going to answer. She had been through it with the Police, through it—twice—with Woodenface Sleason; she knew it by heart, the responses were familiar. But it did take a time—writing it all down in longhand. Hasn’t shorthand been invented, then? No wonder witnesses got fidgety, collapsed, fainted, contradicted themselves . . .

“And did the house, Hambling Hall, strike you in any way?”

My gosh!—did it. “No, not specially.” But that’s not the right answer this time; a little lift of Dante’s eyebrow.

“What about its size?”

“Well—it was a large house.”

“And its—appointments?”

“It was comfortable.”

“How many rooms were there?”

“A lot. I never counted them.” A titter from somewhere; a contemptuous sideways squint from Redbeard as if to say, “For God’s sake, young woman, don’t start getting uppish here”; Bligh looking up with a nasty expression; Israel assessing attentively in the distance. If I could convey to Israel that I like him and hate Bligh—

“No; perhaps not . . . Well, what was your salary, Miss Savage?”

“Four pounds a week.”

“What was the first defendant’s salary?”

“Mr. Sleathe, I don’t see how she could know that.” Redbeard, tired and cultured and appallingly just.

“No, sir. I shall call formal evidence on that point. I am going to establish that the first defendant was living grossly beyond his means; hence the motive in his association with the second defendant.” He cleared his throat and went on with the schedule: “How many cars had they, Miss Savage?”

On and on; question and answer; feet shuffling at the back of the court; the clerk’s pen scratching; one curious hard reiterated cough whose owner ought to do something about it. . . Axey’s visits; how often; how friendly? . . . Was the first defendant present? . . . Did the second defendant say? . . . Then, at last, to the point.

“In August, Miss Savage, had you some money to invest?”

“Yes.”

“A large sum?”

“Large for me. Four hundred pounds.”

“What did you do with it?”

“I asked Mr. Haase to suggest an investment.”

“What made you choose Mr. Haase?”

“I understood he was—I thought he knew about investments.”

“So you—very sensibly—asked him for a tip. And what did he advise?”

“He told me to buy Alnakers Limited.”

“Did that convey anything to you?”

“No. I thought they were a brewery.” More tittering: Redbeard coldly witty—“A brewery of trouble, it would seem”: agreeable laughter.

“Yes, indeed, sir! . . . Did you ask the second defendant what they were?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“As far as I remember, he said they weren’t a brewery, they were—engineers.”

“What sort of engineers?”

“They made aeroplane parts.”

“Ah! Aeroplane parts . . . Now, Miss Savage, you said you asked for advice on an investment. Was this to be an investment?”

“Yes.”

“Or were you intending to re-sell on a rise?”

“Well, yes; I was.”

“Did you fix a figure at which you intended to sell?

“Yes.”

“What made you think of that figure?”

“Mr. Haase suggested it.”

“So Mr. Haase was able to tell you the exact profit you were going to make. Didn’t you think that extraordinarily clever of him?”

“I didn’t know. I don’t know anything about investing.”

“Was the profit he indicated a handsome one?”

“Yes. I was going to nearly double my money.”

“Did he assure you that you would?”

“How could he?”

“I am questioning you, Miss Savage.”

“Well—in a way—I think he said, “If” they did—went up, that was—you would make whatever-it-was.”

“Did you leave it at that?”

“No. I said something like ‘Was it likely’ and he said, ‘Try it and we’ll see.’”

“He said, ‘Try it and we’ll see’.” Scratch, scratch, scratch; the clerk writing it all down; all I am saying against Axey; and I’d rather cut my tongue out . . . “And how did you feel about the venture, Miss Savage?”

“I thought it would probably come off.”

“Why?”

“I thought Mr. Haase knew about these things.”

“Thank you, Miss Savage.” Dante sat down rather suddenly . . . I’ve said something wrong? . . . Well, it must be half over now anyway, more than half.

Bligh, rising for Pelham Tweed; a cold fishy sort of face, a nasty crumpled mouth. A voice like a rattlesnake—or what a rattlesnake should be.

“From first to last, Miss Savage, was Mr. Tweed’s name ever mentioned in this wonderful transaction?”

“No.”

“Was he aware of it?”

“Not so far as I know.”

“Had he anything whatever to do with it at all?”

If only I could say that he had; but he hadn’t. If only it had been Pelham, not Axey; but it wasn’t.

“No. Nothing.”

“Thank you, Miss Savage.”

Down Bligh; up Israel, smiling, his hands in his trouser pockets.

“Do you read the financial papers, Miss Savage?”

“No. Never.”

“Then you don’t know that at the time of your conversation with Mr. Haase aircraft shares were a general market tip?”

“No.”

“I shall show, sir, that such was the case . . . Now, what were your relations with Mr. Haase at that time?”

“Friendly.” What’s he after?

“He was a much older man than you; would it surprise you to know that he regarded you more or less as a child? I mean nothing at all derogatory.”

“N-no.”

“So that, when you came to him and naively asked him to suggest a gamble for you, he told you the first thing which came into his head, which, in the current state of the Stock markets, was naturally an aircraft share?”

“I tell you I don’t know about the markets.”

“No. Would it surprise you to know that his thought was this—‘If it comes off, good and well; if it doesn’t, I’ll tell her it has and she’ll never be any the wiser’?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised at any thought of Mr. Haase’s that was generous and kind.” Slight sensation; Redbeard squinting again; Dante biting his thumb; but by God, I’ve got it off my chest, I have!

“Very handsomely said, Miss Savage.” Israel purring like a cat over cream. “And that being so, do you think—did you think at the time—that Mr. Haase would let you lose—what was it?—four hundred pounds?”

Now careful, Sylvia, careful. “I was in earnest—”

“You were—naturally. But I put it to you that in view of your respective ages and your respective financial positions, the whole thing was something of a farce.”

“In a way—”

“Quite so; in a way it was. So that when Mr. Haase said to you, ‘If the shares go up, you would’ and so on, he was rather ridiculing their chances; in fact, he was treating the whole thing as a pleasant little joke. Was that so?”

“I don’t—I don’t know.” If I can help Axey in any way by giving that impression . . .

“You see now that it was possible?”

“Y-yes.”

“Thank you, Miss Savage . . . Now, in one of your replies you said you thought Mr. Haase ‘knew about these things.’ What things?”

“Oh—financial things in general.”

“Ah! You were not referring specially to these particular shares—er—Alnakers Limited?”

“No.” . . . She saw it! . . . “Oh, no!”

“Very many thanks, Miss Savage.” . . . And now it is over. But no! Dante on his feet again, looking a little darkened, looking bull-like.

“Is four hundred pounds a joke to you, Miss Savage?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Are you in the habit of joking with such sums?”

“No.”

“I see . . . You told us just now that you thought it possible that when Mr. Haase said, ‘If the shares go up’ and so on, he was having a—what shall I say?—an avuncular joke with you. Did you think that at the time?”

“Yes and no.”

“Miss Savage! . . . Did Mr. Haase say these words in jest?”

Oh, if only I could say that he did! But I can’t. I’m on oath after all; and the truth is, we were dead serious over it. Whatever happens to Axey, I can’t say we weren’t.

“I-I’m afraid not.”

“You have no occasion, Miss Savage, to be afraid here or otherwise.” The lowering great brute! “Was it a joke or was it not?”

“It was not.”

“In fact, you thought it so little of a joke that you confidently risked four hundred pounds on it?”

“Y—yes.”

“Thank you.”

And that is really and truly the end; but oh God! it’s the end for Axey too—and I’ve done it, me . . . He never looked at me once . . . Pelham never stopped looking at me . . . Oh, Axey, forgive me; oh, Conrad, I’ll try to make up . . .

And now what? It has all to be read over to me, all this scratch-scratch rigmarole, I have to sign it. Yes . . . yes . . . yes; that’s all right, that’s what I said . . . Bound over to attend at the trial; some nonsense about owing the King ten pounds . . . Oh, Axey, forgive me. Yet I did say that about kind-and-generous; what more could I do?

“You can stay in the Court room now if you like, Miss Savage.”

“Oh, thank you.” But I don’t like. Dante is calling his official witnesses from the Ministry; Pelham’s salary; the dates of these wretched contracts. The next two witnesses are stockbrokers’ clerks—Axey’s buyings and sellings. That’ll take hours. I can’t sit through any more of it. I wish I could have heard Pringle, but I simply can’t wait, I simply can’t wait in this place any longer. Or I’ll be sick . . . Can I go away now, please?

There was a little delay; but it seemed that Dante Bligh and Israel, all duly consulted, were prepared to let her go. In the end she squeezed her way out of the room which was now jammed to suffocation; out into the corridor, through the swing doors; past the nice policeman. She didn’t see Pringle anywhere; just as well. Out in the street the crowd had thinned; there were no cameras; again just as well, thought Sylvia, for I’m in no case to be photographed. The tears were starting from her eyes, running down her cheeks, she felt the salt taste of them in the corners of her mouth . . . I’ve finished Axey; he was kind to me, he is Conrad’s father, and—I’ve finished him. I went into the court and helped them to send him to jail; I should sooner have gone into the Thames. Conrad’s father, Conrad’s father! . . . Wellington Street became a watery blur in which the fruit lorries bobbed and sank like ships riding in a tidal anchorage. They blocked the whole street; it was difficult to see where one was going . . . I’ll cross.

She started to cross. And as she moved out from behind an immense barrow of bananas, there was a sudden shout, a hail, a positive trumpet-blast of triumph.

“Sylvie! Sylvie! Sylvie!”

Now of all things absolutely bloody!

Basil!

XXIV

“Sylvie! I’ve found you. At last!”

Yes, Basil, you’ve found me, and I hope you like the look of me now that you’ve succeeded. Here I am standing in the middle of Wellington Street with the tears running down my cheeks. I am feeling like to drop; I want soap, hot water, powder, a sensible woman if there is such a thing in the world. Of all things I don’t want—Basil.

“Yes, Basil, you’ve found me. I wish you hadn’t.”

He gazed at her eagerly, a little anxiously. He isn’t quite pleased with me, he sees differences, I’m not quite what he expected. He’s looking extraordinarily well—“fit”, as he would say himself. Such a nice suit; his Old Carthusian tie; the latest in hats. Very young, very good form. He hasn’t changed.

“Darling, you must have been having an awful time.”

“Pretty awful, Basil.”

“But you shouldn’t have run away from me, you know.”

“Shouldn’t I?”

“No, silly. It’s you-and-me. Always. Why on earth did you?”

I can’t go into that in the middle of Wellington Street among the bananas.

“Basil! Please! Not here.”

He seemed to see it for himself. “Look here, darling, what you want is some lunch. I bet you didn’t have any breakfast.”

“Not much. And I don’t think I want any lunch.”

“Yes, you do.” He took her arm firmly and marched her off towards the Strand; he confronted her with branch of one of London’s multiple restaurants. “This is a jolly decent place. Come on!”

Sylvia followed him, sighing, through the swing doors. He’s young, young—he doesn’t know. I could perhaps have endured somewhere with the very greatest comfort and a soft string orchestra and perfect light food and old cool wines. Not a Two Shilling Special and Popular Prices. And the typist at the next table staring and wondering where she’s seen that face before. Cesar would have found the right place if he had been here; I wish I had a father at this moment; instead, I seem to have a—son.

The Ladies Cloakroom was inadequate but she did her best in it. Repaired after a fashion, she found Basil sitting at their table, menu in hand, literally shining with enthusiasm.

“Now come on, Sylvie—walk into it.”

She compromised on fillets of sole with apple tart to follow. Good wholesome English food.

“And now, Sylvie, tell me all about it.”

“Oh, Basil, I simply couldn’t. Not just now.”

“No, no; of course not. I was only joking.” But his sympathy stung her into self-despisal; I will tell him.

“Oh, well, why shouldn’t I? There’s nothing much to say. I took a job with Mrs. Tweed at Hambling Hall. We went abroad for a bit—”

“Oh! So you were abroad?”

Sylvia had forgotten Lettuce. “Of course I was; I’m telling you.” (No need to say for how long or how short a time or with what devastating results.) “While we were abroad these people at Hambling Hall got into this mess over Official Secrets—”

“I know. I read about the case coming up in the train. I see there was a beastly Jew in it.”

Basil! When all else is so difficult anyway, need God inspire you to say the one wrong thing? “The beastly Jew, as you call him, was very kind to me.”

But Basil knew all about Jews. “Jews are never kind to you. I mean—not without some ulterior motive.”

“What ulterior motive could he have had? Do you suppose the old gentleman wanted to seduce me?”

He was a little shocked—as he always used to be by her more daring candours. He said darkly, “You never know. Anyway they always make things worse—Jews do, I mean.”

“What are you, then—a Nazi?”

They wandered into a superficial and irrelevant wrangle about anti-Semitism; it followed the usual course. There are a lot of horrible Jews. Well, there are a lot of horrible anybodys, there are a lot of horrible English. Well, why does everybody hate Jews? Everybody doesn’t; only silly people who take their opinions from what other silly people tell them. Oh, you can’t say that, Sylvie—look at history . . . Sylvia felt herself becoming cross; the fillets of sole were even more like plaice than she had expected, the fried potatoes were slimy and cold.

“Oh, don’t let’s go on about the Jews, Basil. Let’s talk about something else. How are things at Bridstead?”

Relieved, he plunged into an account of Bridstead; the Head, the Crisis, the Games This Term—particularly the Games This Term. Spooning up her apple tart which tasted mainly of cloves—she studied him, analysing her own reactions to this meeting. Was I ever interested in the Games at Bridstead? I think perhaps I was once; it’s idle to pretend that I can take the slightest interest in them now. The plain fact is this; I’ve been through lifetime of experience since last I saw Basil—that night in Highgate, breaking up the house there, all these worries at Humbug Hall, those uniquely ageing hours in the Pincio and the Sallustiana, Conrad. I’ve aged, I’ve changed; he is just as he was, he has been through nothing except the Crisis and some vague worry about me. Six months ago I was dreadfully fond of Basil, six months ago he seemed everything, six months ago I was his own age. But I’m quite a different being now—there’s no use denying it or fighting against it; if he can’t see it for himself I must try to tell him . . . Three months ago I wanted to run away and hide from Basil because I wanted to run away and hide from everybody; now I want to get rid of him as him simply because he’s a bore. Good God! what do I care whether the Head is ruining the Hockey Eleven by insisting on a Latin class on Wednesday afternoons? Can it be—can it be at this time—a man’s job to be agitated about such things? He isn’t a man, he’s a boy, a little football-and-hockey, yes-sir-no-sir Prep School boy. And he’s a bore—oh, what a bore! Upon my soul I’d almost rather be sitting here listening to Rule on the New Movement or the Tangier Mohammedans; and if I can say that—!

... Of course, Basil; of course the Head’s insane to want to take up Rugger; of course you could never get any matches . . . Yes, Rule, the New Movement? Yes, Rule, Christianity? . . . The plain fact is that every one of them is a bore now except Conrad. There are now two classes of men—Conrad and the rest. My evidence has just helped to send Conrad’s father to prison. Conrad’s father didn’t tell me the truth about things, he hid himself in his dark Jewish mind; Conrad would do the same. Locked rooms; always . . . Yes, Basil?

He finished at last about Bridstead. “Let’s have some coffee.”

“I don’t want any, Basil.”

“Oh, yes, you do.”

The poor sweet—being masterful! And he is so nice such a charming boy. Never, never any locked rooms here—they aren’t good form. “Such suites to explore, such alcoves to importune”? No, none of these either. No locked rooms here—no rooms at all. Just one large plain cell—furnished with footballs.

There was a Basil-and-Sylvia once; there isn’t now; that’s all there is to it. That Sylvia’s dead; and wishing she wasn’t won’t bring her back . . . And the new Sylvia’s going right away, far away. “Board in exchange for English conversation.” In Santiago, say, or Mozambique . . .

. . . Of course, Basil; of course . . .

A chain of silences broken by bright spurts of conversation; that terrible stage of maladjustment when both are impelled to break silence at once. “No, you go on.” “No, no, I wasn’t going to say anything; you—” But Sylvia thought, He is beginning to see it, he is beginning to look at me with increasing speculation, increasing anxiety; he is beginning to realise that his Sylvie has taken wings and flown away. If he could just come to the words “for ever”. . .

“You’re not feeling rotten or anything, are you, Sylvie?”

“Oh, no; I’m much better now. It’s been a lovely lunch. Thank you ever so much, Basil.”

“Have another cigarette.”

“No, thank you.”

“I say, Sylvie . . . You still like me, don’t you?”

Thank heaven for the chance! And thank heaven that this new and adult Sylvia is capable of dealing with it. We won’t quibble on the word “like”.

“Basil . . . It’s different.”

He gazed at her, his honest eyes big with bewilderment

“Yes. I—I sort of feel that is. But it can’t be, you know, really.”

“It is, Basil.”

“But, Sylvie—how?”

“I’ve changed. I’ve grown old or something. I’ve turned horrid.”

“You haven’t at all. But you are different.”

“Quite different. You don’t like me as well as you did.”

He said valiantly, “Oh, what rot!” Over-valiantly; it was a statement transparently eager. In truth he was puzzled, disappointed, upset; the old ecstasies eluded him; in their place he found a terrifying flatness. Almost, you might say, boredom. Incredible but—there it was. Had he perhaps forgotten her more than he thought? All these months had he been cherishing some sort of ideal, a false picture the real Sylvie couldn’t live up to? Her fault, if it was so; can a man—can a lover—deprived of the living presence keep himself faithful on mere memories? Thinking thus, he said, still valiantly, “It can’t make any real odds. Not to us.”

Well, now for it! “Basil, it does . . . Basil, I couldn’t go on with things again—I just couldn’t. For God’s sake, see it, Basil. Your Sylvie’s dead.”

“She can’t be.” But—well, she seems to be, doesn’t she?

“She is, Basil dear, she is. When I wrote you that letter last July I meant every word of it. Now that I’ve seen you again, I mean every word of it much, much more.”

He grasped eagerly at the letter. “Oh, but all that stuff you wrote was just morbid, just silly—”

“Yes, my dear, but this isn’t. This is much much worse. You’ve got to see it. I’m dreadfully dreadfully sorry but there it is. We’ve lost each other; there it is. See it, Basil, do!”

“We could find each other again.”

“Oh, Basil! nobody ever did that.”

He saw it a little. Then he came to the inevitable question.

“Of course, if there’s another man—Of course, if you’re fond of somebody else now—”

It would be easier for him that way, would it? Well. . .

“Well, there is, Basil. I am.”

He saw it a little more . . .

The waitress, yawning, came and slapped a bill down upon their table. Polite hint to be going; take it.

“Basil, I’m dead tired; I really must get home.”

They got up. “Well, when shall I see you again?”

“Not for a long time. Now please, Basil, let it be like that. I want us to be friends always—”

“Oh—friends!”

“A lovely thing, Basil—friendship. Better than the other thing really . . . I’ll write to you.”

“You promise to do that. You promise to see me again.”

“I promise.”

“Well, let me drive you somewhere. Let’s get a taxi.”

You think, my poor sweet, that in a taxi you could kiss it all away, kiss your old Sylvie back into life again.

“No, Basil, I want to walk. I’m just sick for some air. And I’ve eaten too much. If you want to be kind, Basil—”

He did want to be kind; he let her leave him. She hurried away westward along the Strand and he stood there on the edge of the pavement in his nice suit and his Old Carthusian tie with his new hat in his hand . . . fading . . . fading . . . Exit Basil.

Westward along the Strand went Sylvia, hurrying, her eyes still blind with tears. Basil, Conrad, Axey—I exist to hurt and vex them all. Get thee to a nunnery—go! Santiago or Mozambique—and quickly! . . . Blind with tears, she cannoned violently into a workman with a bag of tools. The shock threw her to the very verge of the pavement, her left foot twisted on the angle-edge of the kerb. For a fraction of a fraction of a second she poised there tottering; then quite slowly her foot doubled and crumpled into the gutter; down came Sylvia. There was a frenzy of agonising pain . . .

I am in mid-air; I am in a swing; I am flying in an aeroplane . . . On the contrary I am lying in the street. A working-man is looking into my face; the hairs of his moustache are like porcupine quills—black with white tips; he hasn’t shaved but his teeth are excellent. Pain, pain, pain! A crowd is collecting; I can’t help it. I hope there are no cameras this time . . . “Fell off the pavement, she did.” “Knocked down by a taxi.” “Get ’er inside.” “Don’t move ’er; ’er leg’s broke.” “Ambulance.” “Is it an accident?” “Knocked down.” . . .“Taxi”. . . “Pavement” . . . Pain, pain, pain; crescendo, crescendo . . . Now I am going into a tunnel; it has flame round the edges. Pain is bright scarlet with yellow streaks . . . cold . . . sick . . .

Blank . . .

*  *  *

At Bridstead the Head said, kindly—though he felt cross rather than kind,

“Well, Caldecott, did you see the young woman?”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

“Was she all right?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Oh, yes, rather.” But the Head, who had adult sons of his own and who had known many Basils, thought, Hullo! Hullo! Hullo!

Young Waters was on to it too. “I say, you chaps, have you seen Caldy?”

“No; why?”

“He must have had a binge. Oh, golly, what a hangover.”

“How d’you know it’s that?”

“Well, look at him . . . I say, I vote we rag him in Prep tonight. I’ll bring in my lizard—”

“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s fair to rag chaps when they’re ill—”

“Ill my foot! If he goes and gets blitheroh in some beastly pub—”

Poor poor Basil!

XXV

The Nursing Home was tucked away in a quiet street not very far from Buckingham Palace; thither Sylvia had been brought after twenty-four hours in the accident ward of the Charing Cross Hospital. Her leg wasn’t broken, but her ankle had been very badly strained and twisted; they talked of a torn ligament. Nothing to do but lie still for a week or two; for this relief much thanks. She had only the vaguest recollection of the day in Charing Cross Hospital—or indeed of the first two days in the Nursing Home; she had either slept or succeeded in not thinking. The young doctor—who took a cheerful view—told her, “You’re a bit gone at both ends. Been worrying a bit, haven’t you? Crisis and so on?” “Crisis!” said Sylvia. “Half a dozen of them!” Her head did seem to be functioning imperfectly, slow to remember, slow to connect; it was the third or fourth day before she could do much in the way of intelligent attention. By that time it was possible to ascertain that the proceedings at Bow Street were long since over and that “Tweed and Haase” had been committed to stand their trial at the Old Bailey. The trial was fixed for the twenty-fourth; proceedings were being expedited “on account of the state of the elder defendant’s health.” The papers, agitated by Duff Cooper’s resignation and the Saarbrucken speech, had pushed the Sold Secrets Case into a corner meantime.

Sylvia’s first visitor was an odd one; it was Gribbie. He crept into her room, a little grey ghost of a man, and sat beside her bed for ten minutes, saying mostly, “If you want me at any time, Miss—” Sylvia said she saw no prospect of it. I’m going to Peru, Gribbie, or Sumatra—somewhere far far away anyway.” He said seriously, “Oh, I wouldn’t do that, Miss; old England’s the best country after all.” And when she said that it hadn’t treated him very well, he replied, “Oh, I don’t know; I did a silly thing; I can see that now.” He was pathetically grateful for his five hundred pounds. “If you want me at any time, Miss; I wouldn’t ask for wages—not unless convenient . . .” He crept away leaving Sylvia with a salutary example of patience and fortitude. The stolid solid British people; the absurdly little they asked for; the absurdly much they would put up with! Hanging on straps in the Tube; queueing up for the Cinema; fighting for buses in the gutter. Millions of Gribbies—just existing and content. Who am I that I should demand—?

The second visitor was George Cadman from the Bank; and his visit was disconcerting and depressing because for a long time they proceeded at cross purposes. George Cadman was pleased with himself and with Sylvia; his attitude was, “Here is a patriotic British anti-Semite who’ll be delighted to know that it was her little transaction that first started the wheels of justice moving.” It was not till Sylvia said, round-eyed and rather horrified, “Do you mean to say it was you!” that he first suspected something amiss. He said guardedly, “Well, I began it. I thought there was something funny behind that Alnaker deal of yours and when I looked into it, by gosh there was.”

“Oh, Caddy, what did you do?”

“Well, I put the facts to the Government.”

“What facts?”

“Well—simply, ‘Here’s a girl who banks with us employed in the house of a Government official. His pal gives her a market tip that nobody believes in—but it comes off. It’s in regard to aircraft shares. This pal and some pals of his buy these shares cheap and sell them dear—like she does.’ Dammit, there was a rat jumping about there the size of a house.”

Sylvia said, most miserably, “So it was me after all.” The tears came into her eyes, her distress was unmistakable. “If it hadn’t been for me—” George Cadman hastily changed his ground.

“Oh, well, you weren’t as important as all that. I mean, in a way you fired the train. But they were bound to tumble to it sooner or later . . . Look here, Sylvia, for heaven’s sake don’t upset yourself or I’ll be sorry I came . . . They’d have got on to Master Tweed all right in due course. They had their eye on him, I know. Dammit, they aren’t such mugs in the Ministry as some people make out.”

“But my evidence—”

“Don’t you believe it! They’d far better evidence than yours. They found some letters that this fellow Haase had written to your boss—absolutely damning they were. The silly ass mentioned certain shares and said, ‘I hope it’s all O.K. about these contracts; we’re having a long wait’. After that, it was all U.P. with Master Tweed.”

“How could they have been so foolish!”

“Well, he was. There they were. You should worry.”

“But if it hadn’t been for me they’d never have looked for them.”

“Don’t you believe it!” But Sylvia did believe it, and after he had gone she lay for a long time dabbing her eyes with a moist handkerchief. Cursed, cursed! I bring trouble to everyone with whom I come in contact . . . To Conrad’s father . . . especially to Conrad’s father. My-son-Conerat . . .

These were unexpected visitors; the unexpected non-visitor was Portia. Portia negotiated the move from the Hospital and she wrote at some length, but she didn’t appear. In her second letter she said she was going to America almost at once: “I think there may be a field for the Crusade there at the moment; quite obviously, now our name has been dragged in the mud here, I can do little in this country at least for some time . . . I am sorry because it will mean the discontinuance of our association together; even should I require another secretary meantime, I think you will see that to keep you on would only be painful to us both . . . I am sending you a cheque . . . many thanks . . . hard and painstaking work . . . reference at any time . . .” It was a very handsome cheque, a cheque of Humbug Hall lavishness; but it didn’t quite compensate for or explain Portia’s non-appearance. Nor did it account for a steely chill in the letter that was remarkable even for Portia; it was a downright icy letter . . . And just latterly, thought Sylvia, she’s been much more unbending; it’s almost as if something fresh must have happened since last I saw her; but surely there could be nothing fresh, surely we’ve had enough?

After all we’ve been through together . . . she might have just come to see me; just for five minutes . . . She’s still at the Grosvenor—only just along the road . . .

Queer metal female! . . .

*  *  *

But the next visitor was both unexpected and enlightening.

It was a bright October afternoon and Sylvia was reading happily in bed when the day nurse—-rather determinedly a ray-of-sunshine but not a bad sort when suitably suppressed—pushed open the door and said,

“Mrs. Labouchere’s come to see you.”

“Mrs. Who?”

“Mrs. Labouchere.”

Sylvia put down her book and said crossly, “I don’t know any Mrs. Labouchere; it’s some mistake.” But there was a familiar voice at the door, a brassy voice, a Shepherd’s Market shriek.

“Darling, it’s Quashy!”

And Quashy it was; Quashy in mink furs and an eccentric hat like an inverted boot and an exceedingly smart ensemble; Quashy with a vast red mouth slitting her idiotic face; Quashy beaming.

“It’s Quashy, darling.”

The nurse retired; Sylvia said with real fury, “I suppose you think it’s funny—coming here and giving a false name.”

“But it isn’t a false name, sweetness.” Quashy sat down by the bed. “It’s me.”

“But—”

“Angel! You don’t mean to say that even yet—”

“Even yet what?”

“Angel! René said you wouldn’t. I said, ‘Oh she must have seen—’”

Sylvia flung her book to the floor. “For God’s sake stop gibbering at me! Or I’ll ring the bell and have you certified. Who’s René?” (“With love from René”—in neat capitals.)

Quashy looked at her feet; she had the grace to feel ashamed.

“You knew him as Pringle, darling.”

“Pringle!” There was a long silence; Sylvia thought, I’m out of my mind; I’m dreaming or delirious; this isn’t happening; this is Humbug Hall’s best yet. She must have looked alarming, for Quashy leaned forward in concern.

“Darling, darling, don’t! I’ll explain.”

“I think you’d better.”

“I will—oh, I will. It’s quite easy really—quite easy. If you just get the hang of it. I can’t think how you never spotted it before—”

“Perhaps you’ll give me a chance now.”

“Oh, I will . . . You see, sweetness, René and I are married—”

“Then his name’s Labouchere?”

“Of course it is!” Quashy had the maddening air of one applauding the unexpected brilliance of a child. “Of course it is. René Labouchere; and his father had the Pins d’Azur Hotel at Cannes—didn’t he tell you?”

“He did. And he told me a lot of other things too.”

“Oh, I know, I know. He would keep playing the fool, I was always telling him not to. But the Pins d’Azur bit was true—oh, and he did go as Assistant Purser once for fun, on a French liner to Saigon or somewhere. Anyway, darling, the Pins d’Azur conked out and René came to this country—”

“But he’s not French?”

“Well, he is and he isn’t. His ancestors were French and they were chucked out in the Revolution or the Huguenots or something and they’ve been English ever since. That’s why he’s so English now—you’d never guess, would you? He was at Sherborne or Marlborough or somewhere. . . But do let me tell you . . . Well, when the Pins d’Azur went phut he came across to this country and took that awful place the Standing Dragon or what ever it was. That bit was all true. It was there I met him.”

“What were you doing there?”

“Livia and I went in for tea one day. Motoring. I can’t remember where we’d been. Does it matter?”

“No. But it must have been quick work. You and—-René, I mean.”

“My pet, it was lightning. I just couldn’t tell you. He kissed me in the lounge. I let him. Darling, I just had to.”

“Well . . . When was all this?”

“About this time last year . . . Then we kept seeing each other. Of course I said I’d marry him. Darling, wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t know. Go on.”

“Well, we kept seeing each other. And I said, ‘Don’t let’s wait.’ So we got married in the Spring. But we didn’t tell anybody, because he was trying to get a job as a Hotel Manager in a place where they didn’t want wives, the brutes, and I said ‘Why should we? It’s our business.’—wasn’t I right, angel? Of course I was.—And then he said, ‘This isn’t much catch—being married and seeing each other once a fortnight’ and of course that was right too, and then I had the brain-wave. It was my idea; I’m so proud of it. I said, ‘You be Pringle’ and he said, ‘Pringle?’ just like that; and I said, ‘Yes, Pringle, our new factotum,’ and of course he loved the idea, he just ate it up—. It was easy really.”

“I shouldn’t have thought—”

“Oh, but it was. You should have seen our servant troubles before he came. Too shattering. My dear, if a possible-looking Hottentot had come after the job, he’d have got it. References? Darling, would we? And of course René was just lovely. He did run the place well, didn’t he?”

“Yes, I’ll admit that. Very well. And I see now why he stayed. I often wondered—”

“I don’t blame you. Well, anyway, I fixed up for him to live in those nice little rooms above the garage—did you ever go up there? No? Pity; I made them really rather sweet—and at nights I used to creep along—oh! mousey-mousey—just to—” Quashy had the grace to blush—“just to see him for a little. And then—”

But Sylvia sat up with a start. “So that was it! All these noises in the night—”

“Yes, darling, that was it. And then that night you caught me and I thought, ‘Oh, God, it’s all up this time,’ and then—then, you sugar angel, you thought it was Robin. Robin!”

“Well, what else—”

“Oh, Syl-via! Robin! Little sweetness-bunny-rabbit; Robin. Me! How could you?”

“Well, how couldn’t I? You seemed—he seemed—”

“Oh, darling, did we? I swear I never meant—I wish I’d thought of it. Such lovely camouflage—but, darling, it was insulting really. That’s why I was so cross with you. And I ought to have kissed you for being so sweetie-pie; I did afterwards, didn’t I? . . . Well, anyway”—the spring ran down; she flopped back in her chair—“that’s how it all was. And now you know.”

And now I know! thought Sylvia. Humbug Hall in excelsis! My God! She took a sudden hard look at Quashy drooping in her chair.

“Quashy, are you going to have a baby?”

Quashy beamed. “Absolutely correct, darling. I am. Isn’t it frightful?”

“Of course it isn’t. But—what were you going to do about that?”

Quashy hung her head. “It was careless of us, wasn’t it? But—oh, you know how it is. Anyway of course, as you say, that was going to bust things up. But it didn’t matter because the sweetness won’t appear till March and René’s just landed the most imperial job in a hotel in Torquay. Manager, darling—with a suite of our own; too Grosvenor House—and they don’t care if he’s wives. But anyway we can’t blame the poor baby because of course it would have been all burst up now anyway.”

“How?”

“Darling, aren’t you just a little—? The great Sold Secrets, of course. That’s why René and I thought you must know now—that’s why I gave my name as Mrs. Labouchere this afternoon. Because of course, René had to tell the Police his real name and he wasn’t Pringle at all and weren’t they snuffy! Why, sweetness, if you’d only waited to hear his evidence at the trial the other day you must have heard him called as René Labouchere. But you didn’t. And you never, never guessed? Sweetness, you’re just too marvellous!”

Sylvia said stiffly that one didn’t expect—

“Of course not, lamb! . .. . Well, anyway, I cleared off to Livia’s, bag and baggage. And now you see, don’t you, why I didn’t want to come to the Grosvenor to see mother?”

“I see. The baby, of course; it does show just a little. But I think it was rotten of you. When did she know?”

“The Bow Street day. René wrote to her.” (So I was right and there was something fresh and that’s why Portia hasn’t been round to see me; she must be feeling—frozen.) “Of course, it was hopeless after that . . . Oh, how angry I was with my beastly father! Giving us all away. If René hadn’t got a job already I’d have gone to the Police Court and told him what I thought of him.”

Sylvia thought, Of all the extraordinary families! They’re not a family. Well, they’re just like that; leave them to it. She said,

“Where did you say your new hotel was?”

“Torquay. The Miramar.”

“But that’s a five-star hotel?”

Quashy flashed. “Well, why shouldn’t it be? René’s a five-star manager . . . Darling, I’m sorry; I keep forgetting what a shock all this must be for you. Too last-chapter. Too detective-story. Elementary, my dear Watson. . .” She glanced sharply at her watch. “Sweetie-pet, I must fly. I’ve got to meet René at the Berkeley. We’re going down to Torquay tomorrow. Of course you must come and stay. Come as soon as you’re better. We’ll give you the royal suite. Oh, do come.”

Sylvia said vaguely, “Perhaps.” But a sudden misery descended upon her. Quashy and her René; five stars at Torquay; and a baby coming and all. Oh, lucky, lucky! And me? “Board in exchange for—” A conspicuous tear slipped down her cheek. Instantly Quashy flung herself round her; the bed, on its silent castors, slid a yard across the linoleum.

“Angel, of course you must. Oh, Sylvia, you really are such a dear. I never never knew anyone I liked so much. Never!” She disengaged herself and moved towards the door, looking down upon Sylvia a little doubtfully. “You’re quite sure you’ve got it all straight now?”

“Oh, yes—quite.”

“And you never never guessed? Not the tiniest? No? Darling . . . And I thought I had given it away once. That night, you know. When I called you a nit-witted old virgin.”

“I don’t see—”

“Well, one virgin doesn’t call another virgin a virgin, darling, does she? . . . If you see what I mean . . .?

Exit Quashy.

*  *  *

And then, at last, Conrad. After Gribbie (the dear!), after George Cadman (not so nice), after Quashy (now am I mad or is she?), after hurt and Humbuggery—at last reality; at last, comfort; at last, Conrad.

“Dr. Haase’s come to see you.” And the ray-of-sunshine perking brightly, a little arch, a little inquisitive bridling nurse-like over the word “doctor.”

“Dr. Haase?” . . . My bed-jacket, the good one; my hair; my face . . . “Ask him to come in, please.” And in came Conrad carrying a bunch of roses the size of a cart-wheel.

“Well, Sylvia.”

“Oh, Conrad. How nice to see you.”

“Is it, Sylvia?”

“You know.” He sat down by the bed—in the chair where Quashy had sat, George Cadman, Gribbie. How they all disappeared; there were no such people!

“Well, Conrad; how’s it all going? Tell me.”

“It’s going on anyway. It’s getting over.”

“Such as?”

“Well—did you know that the trial date was fixed?”

“I heard, the twenty-fourth.”

“Yes, the twenty-fourth. At the Old Bailey.”

“Oh, Conrad! And I won’t be able to go. This foot—”

“You won’t miss much. It’ll only be an hour or so. They—they’re going to plead guilty.”

“But—why?”

“I don’t know. They’ve been advised to. After last Monday it seemed pretty hopeless. They’d found letters, it seems—the Police had, I mean. And they’d found out other things at the Ministry. They really hadn’t a leg to stand on. Better plead guilty and get it over.”

“Conrad, what about—sentence?”

He shrugged his shoulders, staring miserably at the quilt. “Leishman says nine months is the very best we can expect. It might easily be eighteen.”

Sylvia felt the tears coming up again. “But, Conrad, can they plead guilty after first saying not?”

“Oh, yes; it’s often done. People often do it. When they see there’s no use going on.”

When they see there’s no use going on . . .

“You don’t think your father might get off and that little beast get punished?”

He shook his head. “I don’t see any possibility of that. My father’s supposed to be guilty of the same offence as Tweed. It’s under a different section of a different act that they get him, but they get him all the same. If they convict Tweed, they must convict him too.”

Sylvia felt a tear on her cheek; I do cry easily these days; I wish I didn’t; so silly.

“Conrad, I wish I hadn’t had to give that evidence. I’d have given anything not to.”

“You couldn’t help it. You had to say what you knew. You said one kind thing about my father anyway—the only kind thing anyone has said.”

So you did hear about that. “You don’t hate me for it, Conrad? For the evidence, I mean.”

He laughed—just a shade bitterly. “If you’d been the only informant and the only evidence, I couldn’t hate you. If you’d been the only evidence and the whole thing was a lie from beginning to end, I still couldn’t hate you.” He bent over the bed and lightly kissed her cheek. “There!”

It was comforting—oh, it was! “I’m so glad you feel like that about it, Conrad. It’s—decent of you.”

“Decent!” He stroked her hair. “What a silly Sylvia . . . How much longer are you to be in place?”

“Oh, ten days perhaps. Why?”

“Because I want you to get down to this practice business with me. I’ve got a choice between two. One’s Hampstead, the other’s Croydon. Which do you think?”

“I should think Hampstead. There are a lot of—your people—there. It sounds more—”

“I thought Hampstead too. It’s the better practice anyway.”

“But—Conrad—it’s nothing to do with me.”

“You’ll have to live in the house. You’d better see the place beforehand; see how you like it.”

“Conrad, you and I aren’t going to live in any house together—not in Hampstead or anywhere else.”

“Aren’t we?”

“No.”

“I say, yes.” Oh, you make it difficult sitting there on the edge of my bed looking so kind and so handsome and so just adorable. So like a man I once knew rather well in Rome. I feel that warm Conrad-Sylvia thing growing up between us, drawing us into each other; I’m just alive with Conrad and he with me. Oh, it’s impossibly difficult. What was the key-word I had—oh, yes—play for time. After the trial, that was the thing.

“Conrad! It isn’t fair. Not here.”

“What isn’t fair, beautiful?”

“Coming in here and trying to make me say things I don’t want. You get me at a disadvantage.”

“But you’ve got me at a permanent disadvantage, Sylvia. I’m so much in love with you that I simply have to do anything you say. If you don’t like Hampstead—would you rather we went to America?”

She broke into feeble laughter, so near tears that you had to keep on desperately laughing.

“Make it Peru, Conrad. Or New Guinea. That’s where I’m going. After all this.”

“We’ll see about that.”

“Yes, we’ll see about it. After the trial, Conrad. You know, you agreed—you promised.”

“Did I?”

“Yes. You promised to give me time. Let’s wait and see what happens at the trial.”

“Nothing can happen now. Nothing that we don’t know already. They’ll be sentenced. It’s only a question of how long—and we can almost guess that.”

“But—one thing at a time, Conrad.”

He bent over and kissed her again. “You great silly, don’t you see there’s only one thing for me at any time—and that’s you? Nothing else counts . . . You would bring me to life again; you’ve got to take the consequences.”

“So I will—when I know what they are.”

“Well, one of them’s me.” Another kiss—so light, so tantalising, so unsatisfactorily satisfactory. He took one of her roses and slipped it into his buttonhole. “Well—I’ll concentrate on Hampstead. Get better soon. I’ll come back to see you.”

“Yes, Conrad, come back.”

She blew him a kiss as he went out. Comforting—oh, comforting.

*  *  *

Another visitor; two days later. “Mr. Tweed.” Enter Rule this time, bullocking along, falling over his feet, his hair down over one eye.

“Why, Rule! I didn’t expect to see you.”

“Well, you ought to have.” He slumped into the long-suffering bedside chair. “Don’t you take any interest in what I do?”

Not very much; but I can’t say that. “Rule, that’s absurd! You know how interested I was about—about Tangier and all.”

He stared gloomily at the counterpane.

“If you were so interested as all that, d’you remember what you told me to do?”

With difficulty she recollected it. “I think I got in a temper and told you to go and join the Air Force.” Much as I might have told you to go to hell.

“Well, I have.”

Sylvia started up in genuine delight. “What? The Air Force? . . . Oh, well done, Rule!”

“I’m not so sure that it is. It’s damned hard work. Extraordinary people . . . I don’t like the uniform.”

“You’ll get to like it. Oh, Rule, I’m so pleased. I do think it’s splendid.”

“There’s nothing splendid about it. There’s no question of courage. Nowadays the Army’s the safest place. You’ve got to fight anyway; it’s simplest to be in the fighting forces. And safest.”

So you’ve discovered that, have you? “But you feel you’re doing right too?”

“If I didn’t feel that I wouldn’t be doing it.”

Prig! But don’t snub him. “Well, then, I’m glad I suggested it.”

“Oh, it wasn’t you.” His face lowered at her under the crow’s wing of black hair. “I thought the whole thing out very carefully. I can’t stand being rushed. But I thought, one must do something; and when I saw all these blighters—”

“Such as?”

“Oh, everybody, everywhere. A fortnight ago they were all prostrating themselves in front of Chamberlain, all howling with relief because he’d got them off being killed. There wasn’t anything they wouldn’t do—all swarming round volunteering for this and that. And now—-look at them. All back again; all back to the football pools and the pictures. Tschah! . . . I tell you, Sylvia, I’ve found out what this country wants.”

“Yes, Rule?” Another discovery?

“Discipline! Yes, discipline. And that’s why I’ve joined this thing. It wasn’t really anything to do with you.”

“I see.” But you keep reassuring yourself about that, don’t you?

“Of course . . . in a way, you sort of put the thing in my mind. You did make a concrete suggestion.”

“Well, that’s something, isn’t it?”

“So far as it goes. But don’t run away with the idea that you forced me into it. Nobody ever forces me into anything. I wait till I see my way clear and then I take it.”

“Quite so . . . Rule, have you been to see your father?”

“No. And I’m not going to.”

“Oh, Rule! Don’t you think—”

“I think very clearly. I can’t stand crooks.”

“No . . . And your mother’s going to America?”

“Yes. It’s absurd, but of course she does as she thinks best.”

“And—oh, Rule—Quashy!”

Rule got up. “Most disgusting!”

“It isn’t at all.”

“We won’t speak of it. I can’t stand that sort of thing.”

“What sort of thing?”

“Oh—that sort of thing. You know as well as I do I simply can’t stand— . . .”

But after he had gone Sylvia thought, No, Master Rule, no! The high horse is all very well, but the plain fact is that Humbug Hall has fallen to pieces round you. Your father’s going to prison and your mother’s going to America and your sister’s going to her brave new five-star world with her René and her baby and there’s no longer any nice comfortable Humbug Hall for you to play at life in. And that’s why you’ve joined the Air Force, Master Rule. And so little, with all your talk, can you think for yourself that you did the very first thing you were told, the very first thing I told you. You—you Last of the Humbugs that you are!

Or did you really like me a little? Did you really want to please and gratify me? Are you some Humbug Knight in service to a Humbug Ladye Fayre? God knows—I never will . . .

*  *  *

Another four days; then one more visitor—quite likely my last. In forty-eight hours now I’ll be out of this place. My last visitor; so I’m glad it’s Conrad. He is looking pale and tired tonight, weary and crushed and a little frightened. It makes him more attractive, more Conrad, than ever.

“Well, Conrad? All over?”

“Yes. It’s all over.”

“What happened?”

“They got a year each. Twelve months each in the second division.”

“That means?”

“It means things will be a bit easier for them. They won’t be put among the ordinary criminals. They get some little privileges, I think—letters and things.”

“I suppose it’s as good as we could have expected.”

“Oh, yes. Sleathe was very fair. Rosemeyer said all he could for my father. They might easily have got twice as much.”

“How did—Axey—take it?”

“Badly. And he looked so ill—so thin, so shrunken. When he comes out we’ll have to be very kind to him . . . Tweed looked all right.”

“Oh, he would be! . . . Conrad, when I think it was I who brought Axey there, it was his attempt to be kind to me—”

“But you mustn’t think that. That’s really untrue. If you had never existed, they were bound to have been found out sooner or later. And as to the evidence, those letters of my father’s—I can’t think why Tweed kept them.”

“I can. Lots of reasons. Perhaps he wanted to keep a hold on your father. Perhaps he fancied a little blackmail one day.”

“Oh, I don’t think surely—”

“I wouldn’t put much past Mr. Pelham Tweed. A real bad hat, my dear, if ever there was one. And yet I almost liked him at times. Ugh! . . . Well, that’s all over.”

“That’s all over. And now we come to the what-next.”

“Yes . . . Have you fixed up about your practice?”

“Nearly. Not quite.”

“Why not altogether?”

“Because I’m waiting for you.”

Silence . . . “Conrad, I wish you wouldn’t make me say horrid things, hurtful things to you tonight, when you’re tired and worried.”

“Well, don’t say them.”

“But I must—if you will keep harking back . . . Conrad, it wouldn’t work.”

“What wouldn’t?”

“You and I trying to set up house together.”

“Why wouldn’t it?”

“Oh, Conrad, do leave it alone tonight.”

“But why?” And then at last the question that had to come . . . “Sylvia, is it because I’m a Jew?”

Silence again. But silences will not avail; his question must be answered; it is a question that lies between us like a hopeless barrier, it will always be arising, I must face it and dispose of it.

“Well, Conrad . . . Yes.” Thank God, that’s out.

He took it very quietly, gazing at her steadily—as he must gaze at his patients, puzzling over a diagnosis, wondering how best to put to them the mysteries of their case, how best to draw information for himself.

“What makes you think that that’s a reason, Sylvia?”

She began a rather incoherent explanation, the muddle of many sleepless nights, of many bewildered hours . . . “There would always be things I wouldn’t understand in you; things I wouldn’t share; you’d always, every now and then, go away from me.” . . . Prepared words, they sounded absurd, flat, unreasonable.

“But, you silly girl, that’s so with every two people who love each other. There are always points of non-contact. And the closer two people are in general, the wider the gaps of non-contact where they do exist. Of course it would be so with us; we should lose each other, miss each other, now and then. But not because I’m a Jew and you’re not, but because you’re Sylvia and I’m Conrad.”

She shook her head.

“Little silly!” He sat down on the edge of the bed and took her hand very gently in his. “What’s all this about Jews? You’ve been reading a Nazi picture book. One of old man Streicher’s. It’s some kind of silly delusion. Jews—terrible Jews. Doing all kinds of dark dreadful things, stealing Christian children and crucifying them and drinking their blood. Ever since Hugh of Lincoln and long before. Sylvia, do you believe I crucify children and drink their blood?”

“No, of course not. But—”

“Then why believe all the other rubbish? You think we’re some kind of magicians, some kind of necromancers, some kind of mystery. It’s all rot. If a Jew is orthodox he differs from other men in some points of his religious belief and observances; if he’s not orthodox—like me—he doesn’t differ from them at all. There’s nothing strange or mysterious about Jews. Damn it, Sylvia, I am one—I ought to know.”

“You can say that; I can’t feel it. I’d be frightened, Conrad.”

“I can’t believe you’d ever be frightened. You weren’t frightened that night in Rome. You just went right ahead.”

“That was different.” Sylvia smiled faintly. “I had to do something about you.”

“Quite so. And having done that something, you’ve got to keep on doing it. Don’t you see that? If you let me down now— It would be worse than Rome because now I haven’t anybody—”

“Don’t be absurd. You’d have your practice.”

“I wouldn’t have any practice. Not here. I’d go back to Germany.”

She said, startled and alarmed, “You couldn’t.”

“I could. I should be wanted there. Our people.”

“You couldn’t get into the country.”

“Oh, yes I could.”

“How?”

“There are ways and means. You can buy forged passports, remember. You can buy Portuguese passports, Greek passports—all sorts of things. If you don’t want me to do that—”

“I don’t want you to do that.”

“Well, then—you know what to do. Give me a trial Sylvia. I swear you’ll like it. If you don’t, if you’re not happy, if I’m running away from you into some terrible-Jew mysteries, just come and tell me and I’ll let you off.”

“Wouldn’t it be rather late in the day?”

“It wouldn’t happen at all—late in the day or early . . . Oh, Sylvia . . .”

Sylvia said rather desperately, “Conrad, give me a little more time. Give me time to pull myself together. I’ve been through a lot just lately—more than you know. I’ve no command, I’m not sure of myself. If you’d agree not to see me for a month—”

“Not to see you at all?”

“Not at all. And for a month. At the end of that time I’ll honest-to-God tell you. I’ll think about you all the time and I’ll try my best to do what you wish. More than that I can’t say. Don’t press it now or you’ll spoil everything. Finally.”

“But a month, Sylvia? It’s an age.”

“Nothing less would be any good. A month or nothing. If you won’t agree to that, I’ll say ‘No’ finally now.”

He smiled down at her. “Anything better than that. Very well; a month, then.” He picked up her hand, kissed the palm of it, curled down the fingers over the place he had kissed.

“Keep that one till I come back for it.”

*  *  *

Lettuce, coming in late that evening, found a Sylvia strangely inert, strangely indisposed even to contemplate action. Lettuce brightly reminded her that she would very soon be out of the Nursing Home now. “And what are you thinking of doing, my dear?”

“Do you know anywhere further away than Fiji, Lettuce? Because that’s where I would like to go.”

“Sylvia dear, isn’t it a little cowardly to talk like that? Do be sensible, do be practical. You can’t live on nothing, can you?”

“No.”

“So you’ll have to find something to do, some other secretarial work or something.”

“Yes.”

“You can come and stay with me while you look round.” Such a pity, Lettuce was thinking, that Humbug Hall should have collapsed so completely—when it was so promising, such an interesting place.

“It’s sweet of you, Lettuce.”

“There isn’t much room in my flat, as you know. But of course it won’t be for long. You’re sure to pick up something almost at once. With your gifts—The only thing is, you mustn’t lie down to it. I know you’ve had bad luck—”

“Lettuce!”

“Yes, my dear?”

“Tell me something . . . Would you marry a Jew?”

“Marry a Jew? . . . Good gracious, Sylvia, I never thought about such a thing. If you spring it on me like that—. . . Well, I really don’t know.”

“That’s just it,” Sylvia said. “I really don’t know either.”

XXVI

Lettuce’s flat was small, comfortable, too full of furniture; Lettuce was small, comfortable, too full of good advice. At the end of ten days Sylvia was tired of them both. Yet there was nothing for it but to stay on with Lettuce—and be thankful. For though the days ran on, employment eluded. The days ran on; the end-of-the-year festivals approached; Guy Fawkes Day passed in a Saturday night of silly spluttering and banging that frightened Lettuce’s cat; it would soon be Armistice Day, St. Andrew’s Day, Christmas. The ideal employer—an authoress of just the right age who desired to write an exhaustive work on Fiji and required the services of a travelling secretary—failed to appear; so did the second best—an elderly statistician with an interest in Patagonian economics requiring investigation in situ. So did the third and the fourth best; and all bests; and all worsts. Nobody wanted Sylvia at any price.

Lettuce was always brightly encouraging—and genuinely so, for she had a vast admiration for Sylvia’s accomplishments which was comforting at times even if one knew it to be exaggerated. “With your gifts, Sylvia—” And when one asked her what they were, she reeled off quite a list. Her confidence was gratifying during the dismal process of pulling strings, ringing up possibilities, calling hopefully, calling back again not so hopefully; day after day, without appreciable result. Even educational, even “board for conversation” posts were unobtainable now; so many of the earnest students of language had been Jews, and they had been given other things to study.

A pity one couldn’t be as lucky as Lettuce who had nothing to do but live on a private income and eke it out with occasional articles and book reviews on the Murano school of glass-making. Somehow—she herself hardly knew how—Lettuce had become an authority on this subject.

She was also—with less foundation—an authority on Patriotism; yearning back wistfully to the bitter-sweet excitements of those end-of-September days, she said, “I think you ought to take up some A.R.P. work, Sylvia.”

Sylvia said, Yes, but what? “I’m no good at nursing—that’s been proved time and again. That rules out First Aid.”

“You can drive a car.”

“Every woman says she can drive a car. They’ll all try that.”

“Well, an Air Raid Warden.”

Refuge of the destitute! “Yes, I could perhaps do that.”

So Sylvia joined a class for instruction in Anti-Gas Protection—which seemed to be the only kind of instruction that was going; and wondered a little at the queer mixture of “volunteers” who desired to serve their country as Air Raid Wardens. Quite a number of them were young men—but when the trouble came, surely these would be otherwise employed?. Territorials? anti-aircraft? There were two brace of giggling girls who went red in the face whenever they were asked to do anything; nice girls, no doubt, good girls but hardly—leaders. There were some elderly gentlemen very tired and yawny after a long day in office. Only a fraction of the candidates looked reasonably suitable for the work they had chosen.

Sylvia and Lettuce quarrelled about them—as they had quarrelled all their lives without serious ill-feeling.

“You shouldn’t say that, Sylvia. They’re all doing their best.”

“Oh, yes, I know. All honour to them. It’s not their fault in the least. But they’re in the wrong boat. We ought to have compulsion. They ought to be told where they should go instead of being allowed to go where they think right.”

But Lettuce couldn’t stand the idea of compulsion.

“Oh, no, Sylvia. We’ve never had compulsion in peacetime yet.”

“We had it in war. We’d have it again the moment war started. We’d have to. It’s common knowledge. What’s the use of pretending we can do without it in peace?”

“We can do without it. It’s not English—”

“Oh, Lettuce—”

“We can get all we want without it. People have come forward splendidly for A.R.P.”

“Splendidly? In most places we haven’t got fifty per cent of strength. You call that splendid . . .”

And then one evening—it was the 7th of November—they had a rather worse quarrel. Sylvia came home tired, disheartened and cross, to find Lettuce in a great taking over her evening paper.

“Oh, Sylvia, do you see what these beasts have done now?”

Sylvia had seen something in an earlier edition; she read now the more detailed account of the shooting of vom Rath, the Private Secretary to the German Ambassador in Paris, by the young Polish Jew Grynszpan. She said, with a hardness she did not really feel, “Well? These things happen.”

“Oh, Sylvia, how can you! The fine young man! Those beastly Jews!”

“How do you know he was a fine young man? How do you know it was a beastly Jew?”

“It was a Jew. It says so.”

“It says he was seventeen and had the mentality of thirteen. In that case he wasn’t a Jew, he was an imbecile.”

“It doesn’t say he was an imbecile.”

“Well, he obviously was. You’ll find them everywhere. London’s full of them. You can’t blame the Jews for that.”

But Lettuce’s politics were a curious blend of appeasement and anti-Semitism. “That’s not what the Nazis will say.”

“And I suppose you’re a Nazi?”

“I’m not!”

“Yes, you are. A horrid little Oswald Mosley Nazi. . .”

They had quite an unpleasant, this time quite an acrimonious, wrangle because the Jew Grynszpan had shot the Nazi vom Rath.

*  *  *

In the morning Sylvia was ashamed of herself; she had said some very unkind things to Lettuce—sweet Lettuce on whose shelter she was at this moment depending. But her intended apologies—which would have been generous—were driven out of her mind by a letter that lay on her plate at breakfast. It was from Axey.

It was from Axey. Written on rough greyish paper. Written from Wormwood Scrubbs prison. If Wormwood Scrubbs is anything like as horrible as it sounds . . .

“My dear Sylvia, It has been a matter of great regret to me that I have never been able to thank you for all that you did in Rome for my son Conrad.” (“My-Son Conerat”; how you could hear him saying it!) “But not think I do not know of it; do not think I do not appreciate it. I know to what straits he had fallen, I know; in a way you, perhaps, with your happier accident of birth, can never know—how terribly despair had taken hold of him. And I know how you rescued him.

“It had been my intention to bring him to my house at Elding and there cherish and restore him. Events as you know, have disposed of that plan for the time being. I am not complaining; I took a risk—the risk of being found out—and am well served for my failure. But will you please go on looking after my son Conrad? He is headstrong, he has rash impulses, he greatly needs help. I do not think he has anyone to turn to but you.

“I am well, but not very well. In any case it will be some months before I am released from this place. In the meantime, please help my son Conrad, settle him, look after him. I entrust him to you.”

Sylvia went out without seeing Lettuce. She did not cry; but she could not have risked speech—not even with Lettuce.

“He greatly needs help . . . Settle him, look after him . . . I entrust him to you . . . my-son-Conerat. . .” Well!

It was a dreary day, that November Tuesday, a long dreary day. Humanity continued to have no need for Sylvia; the ideal employers—any employers whatsoever—withheld themselves. At intervals—in tubes, in buses, in waiting-rooms, in a tea-shop—she read Axey’s letter. “I entrust him to you.” “I entrust him to you.” “My-son-Conerat.”

Now what am I to do about that?

It was her A.R.P. lecture evening; tonight the lecturer—a railway clerk in his working hours—was describing poison gas. C.A.P., K.S.K., B.B.C.; chlorine in a greeny-yellow cloud; the geranium reek of Lewisite. How could one believe in a kind or even friendly God when his materials fitted in so perfectly with man’s malignity? With such an unnecessary and helpful refinement? These arsenical smokes; when you put on your respirator you felt at first much worse; you said, “Oh, this thing’s useless!”; you threw it away—and became a prey to some really lethal gas the enemy had flung down. When, if you had only kept it on—! . . . The insidious attack of mustard; you never saw it, it destroyed your own sense of its smell, it soaked into you like ink into blotting paper and you never realised till . . . The false feeling of recovery after phosgene; you said happily, “Why, I’m all right again after all!”, you went on with your work—and killed yourself surely with every breath you drew. Whereas, if you hadn’t felt better and had just lain still— . . . So neatly, so very neatly arranged! Difficult to believe in God the Father? Difficult not to believe in God the Devil. The lecturer passed round a picture of a man in the “blue” stage of lung-destruction; another of a man in the “grey”. “That chap in the grey picture was dead five minutes after that picture was made.” . . . Real.

The lecture put the copestone on a depressing day; Sylvia walked home chilled and miserable. This is all real; at any time men may come flying through the sky throwing down containers of these horrible stuffs. I may be gassed, Lettuce may be gassed, Conrad may be gassed. They may have some horrible new gas that gets through our respirators; why shouldn’t they—they who have thought out so many horrors? It may come; it may come soon. If so, I am wasting time. We are all wasting time; I especially. I am hesitating over Conrad, shilly-shallying and dilly-dallying over him; thinking about the risk of marrying him. Good God, if things are as they appear, what risk could I run by marrying Conrad that could compare with the risks I run by merely going on living?

*  *  *

Wednesday was a brighter day—as if this astonishingly fine November were trying to make up for the September that had been wrecked. Sylvia went at last to see old Glarus, the art dealer. Glarus, last July, had said in the strange speech he believed to be English, “I fix you up a zhob. Zhust for a little. You sell mine bee-yewtiful sings.” She had refused it then because of the get-away, but now it seemed as if it might be useful as a stop-gap; I must get something to do.

Glarus was a Polish Jew who smelt like a cedar-wood cigar-box that has been used for storing lavender. He had a beard that immediately suggested kaftans and Wailing Walls. He welcomed Sylvia kindly and gave her a glass of rather dubious sherry—not, thought Sylvia, the kind he keeps for his customers. She said, looking round her, “You’ve sold the Laughing Lady?”

Glarus said, “Ja, I sell her. I don’ get mush.”

Sylvia thought, “That’s a lie; but he only tells me it from force of habit.” She asked him as to the prospects of employment.

“Sure I give you. Sure. I don’t pay no sal’ry; but you get commeession. Ten per cent.”

“Fifteen.”

“O.K. O.K. Fifteen.” Sylvia thought, He’d have gone to twenty. Jews, Jews; what Jews Jews are! She asked what she was likely to make.

“Nod zo mush. My gostomers don’ ’ave money now. No Zhews ’ave money.”

“You mean they’ve hidden it.”

“Per’aps. If zo, it vill gom out again.”

“You don’t think the Jews are done for, then?”

“Done for?”

“Finished. Ruined. Beaten.”

He shook his head. “Nevair! Nevair! It is not to be done. Nevair finished, nevair beaten. Nevair.”

He gave her another glass of sherry, excusing the generosity to himself by saying, “I know your fader . . . You read the newspaper, no?”

“Yes. Too many.”

“Zere are too many. And in zis gontry zey say too mush. ’Ow to be friend wiz Itler ven you call ’im gangster, liar, t’ief? And if zis vom Rath die—”

“They say he will.”

“Ah, zen. God ’elp ze Zhew.”

“You think they’ll seize on the excuse?”

“I zink zere will be a pogrom . . . ’Ave a leetle more sherry. Ve vill drink to zat vom Rath live; because if he don’—”

*  *  *

On the strength of having obtained what was at least occupation, Sylvia allowed herself an evening paper to read on the bus ride home. It contained two announcements of special interest to Sylvia.

The first was splashed over the front page; you couldn’t miss it. Vom Rath was dead.

The second was tucked away in so inconspicuous a corner that you came on it only by chance; if there had not been a space to fill up, it might have not been there at all.

“Sold Secrets Case Echo. Axel Haase, the senior defendant in the Sold Secrets Case, died this morning at Wormwood Scrubbs. He was 64.”

XXVII

Wednesday November 9th, Thursday November 10th, Friday November 11th, Armistice Day, Saturday . . .

The first thing to do had been, of course, to meet Conrad. Immediately to meet Conrad and offer him one’s help and consolation for what these were worth. The help and consolation were there in readiness; they welled up inside one like fountains, like warm steaming geysers. They surged and overflowed till it hurt. As to that stipulated month’s time—forget it! Conrad is in bitter trouble again; he must need me; I must go to him. And then—quite ridiculously, quite farcically—Conrad couldn’t be found. He couldn’t be found on Thursday or Friday; by midday on Saturday there was still no Conrad.

Of all the maddening absurdities! . . . Absurd at first—laughable; but presently frightening, frightening . . .

It had begun with ringing up Flagg's Hotel, ringing up Flagg's Hotel the instant one got home from that terrible bus journey. "Is that Flagg's Hotel? Is Doctor Haase in, please?"

“Doctor Who?" A rather idiot-sounding girl.

“Haase. H, double-A, S, E."

"Oh! Doctor Haze. He doesn't live here now."

“Oh! Then could you tell me please where I could find him? It's rather urgent."

“I'll enquire." Sulky, apparently, as well as idiot. A pause, an endless pause. Then, "Are you there? I'm sorry we haven't any address."

“Are you sure?"

“Well, I asked them in the office. Doctor Haze left no address."

Doctor Haze! You intolerable ninny, if only I could shake you!

"Not even for forwarding letters?"

“No, nothing."

“Oh . . . thank you."

“Don't mention it."

Thus the first completely unexpected, completely daunting reverse; the first of a series, as it proved. Absurdly, in this moment of crisis, Conrad just couldn’t be found. They didn’t know at Wormwood Scrubbs and they were suspicious when asked—more suspicious still when one went all the way out to see them in person. He had been there, of course; he might come back; they didn’t know where he lived, no time had been fixed for the funeral. The Elding Post Office, tried as a last resort, was equally blank. Thus was wasted Thursday.

On Friday morning the papers made terrible reading. In the early dark of Thursday morning, long before the sun rose, a whispered order had run round the low-rank Nazi organisations in Berlin. Who sent it out? Ah, now you were asking! But out it had gone and by three o’clock, that dead and demon-haunted hour of the night, the wreckers were blasting their way through Berlin and Munich and a dozen other towns. They knew exactly where to go, they knew exactly what to do. Bombs roared, the Jewish synagogues went towering up in flames; plate glass splintered and flew, the goods of the Jewish shop-owners littered the pavements. Little boys of twelve and thirteen—who ought to have been in bed— were prominent in the good work. Crash, smash, explosion, flame, arrest. . . Late in the evening, after a day of it, came leisurely the Police patrols . . .

Glarus was pleased with Sylvia because—aided perhaps a little by Lettuce’s jargon—she had sold a set of Venetian goblets from the school of Giuseppe Briati. He brought her the morning paper, wagging his beard like a patriarch.

“What I have tell you? It is a pogrom.”

Sylvia, her mind elsewhere, said absently that it was dreadful.

“Sure. Sure. But zis is only the beginning. Goebbels zays it will be by laws and decrees. You shall see. I tell you now the law-and-decree Goebbels will give to the Zhews; it is shust you-go-to-hell. I tell you!”

It was on the way to lunch that Sylvia saw over a shop door in Piccadilly “Leishman and Grade; Wine merchants” and the first of these names leapt up and rang a bell in her mind. “Leishman.” Conrad had said, “Leishman is our solicitor”. Now why couldn’t I think of that before? She was so excited that she ran all the way to the telephone boxes in Piccadilly Circus station; of course they were all occupied; endlessly cackling women shrieking to their nit-wit friends, tireless regiments of men buying and selling all London. But at last a box was empty; and then, of course, in the telephone book there was no such Leishman. No Leishman that could possibly be the Leishman. The disappointment was so bitter that it was difficult to retain sufficient presence of mind to go on; but she rang George Cadman and caught him just leaving the Bank for a late lunch.

“Caddy, how can I find a solicitor called Leishman?”

“Try the Telephone Directory.”

“Oh, Caddy! Wouldn’t I have done that already?”

“I don’t know. Try the Law Directory, then.”

“Where?”

“Any Public Library.”

But Sylvia suddenly had a better idea than that—the wooden blue-face Sleason. Telephoning dauntlessly, she caught him nibbling a sandwich and an apple in his office.

Mr. Sleason, it’s Miss Savage. You remember . . . Do you know a solicitor called Leishman?”

Mr. Sleason could be heard chewing his apple; he didn’t think he did.

“He was Mr. Haase’s solicitor in the trial. You must remember.”

“Oh, that fellow!” Champ, champ. “He was Fitch and Macgregor; no, Lewisohn and Rape.”

“Who?”

“Lewisohn and Rape. Leishman’s a junior partner. It used to be Leishman, Leishman and Lewisohn. Then—”

“Mr. Sleason, where are they?”

“Eh? . . . Oh, somewhere about Gracechurch Street, I think. They’ll be in the telephone book you know.”

“Yes, yes. Thank you.” Dial, dial again; frenziedly. The luck of the hunt has been fair so far; follow it up. Is that Messrs. Lewisohn and Rape? What? Buzz-crackle-buzz. Yes? Could I speak to Mr. Leishman please? What? . . . Oh . . . In Paris. I see. When will he be back? Not for ten days? . . . Oh . . . No; nothing . . . Oh, well, it was only to see if you could give me the present address of Mr. Conrad Haase; you remember, in the official secrets case last month . . . Oh, thank you so much . . . Mr. Conrad Haase . . . (Please, God, reward my perseverance; please let them know it.) . . . Yes, yes? What? Flagg’s Hotel, W.C.2. Oh thank you; goodbye.

Thus—and in a futile call at Flagg’s Hotel where they had no address or had lost any that had been given them and in similar fatuities and failures—was wasted Friday . . . And I’m getting frightened. I’m getting really frightened. Where is he? What is he doing? Is he doing something wild and reckless? “He is headstrong, he has rash impulses, he greatly needs help.” Don’t I know it; don’t I? He has just lost his father, Axey; in Germany his people are being savaged and destroyed; what, oh what can be his frame of mind? Where is he?

Why doesn’t he come to me? Ah, that I can answer. It is because I have put him off, because I have failed him, because I have played shilly-shally and dilly-dally and hot-and-cold and back-and-fill . . . Come to me again, Conrad; find you me if I cannot find you; and I will not fail you this time . . .

He said he would go to Germany. Has he gone? has—oh, please, God, no, not that!

*  *  *

At one-five p.m. on Saturday Conrad was still lost and Sylvia, sick with fright and anxiety, was climbing the stairs to Lettuce’s liftless flat. At one-six he was found; for as Sylvia stumbled, almost fell, into the flat, Lettuce was saying coldly and defensively into the telephone receiver, “Very well; very well; I’ll tell her. I’ll tell her you rang up.” The receiver was actually half way back to its fork, it was within an inch of it, when Sylvia shrieked, “Don’t! Hold it!” It says much for Lettuce that she punctuated this frenzied appeal correctly; she raised the receiver again and said with the utmost calmness, “Are you there? Hold on, please; she’s just coming in.” With a reproachful look in her large soft rabbity eyes she held out the receiver to Sylvia who snatched it.

”Conrad!” Because she knew it was Conrad; one knows.

“Is that Sylvia? They said you were out.”

“So I was. I just came in just in time.” She was a little breathless. “Just in time. Why haven’t you let me hear from you? I know I said not to. But you must have known everything was different now.”

“You didn’t say so.”

“I didn’t know where you were. Conrad, this is the second time that’s happened. It mustn’t ever happen again.”

“Perhaps it won’t.” There was a rather cold little silence.

“Conrad, what have you been doing?”

“I’ve been to my father’s funeral.”

“When?”

“Yesterday.”

“Where are you now? Where are you speaking from?”

“From the Charing Cross tube station.”

Another little silence. “Conrad, I can’t possibly talk to you on the phone. Not the things I have to say.”

“No . . . Nor I . . . Well, where can we meet?”

“Here of course. Come straight along. You can, can’t you? Say you can.”

“Yes. I can. It’s Flamborough Court, isn’t it?”

“Yes. 62. Miss Firjohn’s flat. . . By the way, Conrad, how did you come to ring up? I mean how did you know?”

“Oh, there was no mystery about that.” He sounded almost irritable. “You told me about your cousin when you were in that nursing home. Firjohn isn’t a very common name.”

“No . . . Have you been hunting for me, Conrad? Say you have.”

“Not till today.” Rather cold again.

“Oh . . . Well, come along now. Jump on to a 48 bus; it’ll take you almost to the door. Get off at the corner of Acacia Road and ask. Hurry, Conrad. You’re sure you’ve got the address right? Number Sixty-two; six, two. Flamborough—”

There was no reply from the other end except the sound of the receiver going back into its place. Setting down her own, Sylvia turned round to face the expectant Lettuce who was looking solemn and rabbitish. Lettuce said, “You seemed to know who it was.”

“Didn’t he give you his name?”

“No. I supposed it was the same young man as before.”

“The same young man . . . What young man?”

“Who wrote when you were at Hambling Hall. And who came to call; I wrote and told you about it. He was perpetually ringing up. A school, you know, in Sussex—”

“Oh, Basil!” Sylvia broke into helpless laughter. “No, Lettuce darling, it isn’t the same young man.”

“No?”

“Anything but. It’s everything in the wide world that is not the same young man.”

Lettuce said that she saw. It was creditable to her because the statement was in fact true, and she did see. As was evidenced by the fact that although lunch for two—and a very nice lunch for two—was laid out upon the table, she said almost instantly that she was lunching out and must fly. Looking very rabbitish, very lettucey, indeed . . .

*  *  *

Conrad came within half an hour and the moment she saw him Sylvia was more frightened than ever. Her first thought was—“He looks just like he did in Rome”; and it was true. There before her again was that desperate face suddenly floodlit in the Campidoglio Cinema—taut, strained, hunted, the face of a young man looking at death. Frightening! But on these occasions you do not, you must not exclaim; instead, you say something banal about lunch.

“I’ve had lunch, thank you.”

“That’s all right, then. So have I.” And Lettuce’s nice lunch for two continued to lie untouched on the table; it stared at them accusingly; he never noticed it. “Conrad, you don’t look well.”

“Don’t I?”

“No. You look like—Rome.”

“Well, I feel like Rome. I wish I was in Rome still. You did me a bad turn when you took me away from it.”

Sylvia bit back the retort that Signor Mussolini had also something to do with that. “No, I didn’t, Conrad. I’ll do you a good turn now to make up. All the good turns in the world.”

“It’s too late.”

“Oh, Conrad, it isn’t.”

“Yes, it is.”

“No, Conrad dear, no . . . Axey . . . Let me share this with you; don’t shut me out. Remember I was fond of him too—fonder than I knew. He was good to me.”

“He was good to everybody. And this is the thanks he gets for it. To die in the sickroom of a prison! This beastly bloody world—! . . . And I can’t do anything for him—now.”

“You did everything you could, Conrad.’

“I did nothing that I could. I didn’t stay with him when I should have stayed. I let him go on by himself—”

“But, my dear, he was all right. He wasn’t in want or anything—”

“He was worrying about me a great deal. If he hadn’t worried about me so much, he mightn’t have got so ill. He mightn’t have died now in this cursed place they sent him to—”

“Conrad, dear, what is the good of ‘might have’s and ‘mightn’t have’s? Don’t—”

“And that isn’t the only thing either. It’s by no means the only thing . . . You’ve seen the papers, I suppose?”

“Yes . . . You mean—Germany.”

“Yes. Germany. These brutes. These swine!”

What am I to say about that?” I know how you must feel.” But, of course, I don’t—-quite; nobody could except one of—themselves.

“You can’t know. It’s—it’s—”

“I can’t know just how Jews themselves must feel about it. But I do know and I do feel what everybody else feels. Everybody sympathises, Conrad; everybody’s disgusted. It’s—it’s so mean. To pick on an excuse—a poor demented boy—a thing nobody could help—”

“Sympathy isn’t enough. Disgust isn’t enough. One must do things.”

“But what can one do? It isn’t our country. In a sense the Nazis have a right to do what they like. We can’t stop them.”

“We can’t stop them. But there are other things that can be done. I know what I’m going to do.”

“Conrad! What?”

“I’m going back to Germany at once. I’m going to help.”

“But—Conrad You can’t.”

“Why not?” He jumped up and began striding up and down Lettuce’s crowded little room. “Good God, Sylvia, these are my own people, my father’s people. They’re being flung out into the fields, chased into the woods, Sylvia. In winter. They’ll be ill, sick, wretched, hungry. I call myself a doctor. What am I for? If it isn’t to go and help them through it—”

Sylvia sat aghast. He’s crazy, he’s just crazy! He would kill himself as surely as ever he would have done with that horrible thing in the cupboard in the Via Sallustiana. He mustn’t.

“But, Conrad—you can’t.”

“I can try.”

“My dear, you can’t even do that . . . Oh, for God’s sake, sit down, Conrad! . . . Listen; how are you going to get into the country?”

“I told you. I told you before that I’d get a fake passport. I’ve got one. I flew to Paris for it.”

You flew to Paris for it! So that’s where you were. And what sort of a thing have they sold you?

“Oh, Conrad, don’t be simply ridiculous! You’d never get beyond the frontier. They’d spot your silly passport in five minutes.”

“I don’t see why they should.”

“Because that’s what they’re there for. This is Germany, Conrad, Nazi Germany; it isn’t Mexico or Costa Rica. My poor dear, they’d spot your passport in five minutes; in ten you’d either be in a German prison with the people you came to help or else you’d be ignominiously turned back here. And when you got here, they’d have telegraphed ahead and you’d be run in by our own Police . . . Oh, Conrad, do see it. . . It’s just too silly!”

“Silly! You call it silly!”

“Yes, that’s just what I do call it. I know how you feel, I know what you want to do and I respect you for wanting it but—oh, Conrad, what’s the use of just throwing yourself away! What’s the use of starting out on a grand scheme of rescue when you can’t even get into the country?”

“I’ll get in somehow.”

“How?”

“I’ll sneak in.”

“And be shot by a sentry doing it . . . Conrad, you’re just being babyish. You’re not talking like a grown-up. Even supposing you did get in, what on earth could you do? You’d just be another mouth for your poor people to feed—till the Nazis put you in prison again . . . Darling, I love you for wanting to, but—oh, do see sense!”

He will see sense, he must see it. He does see it. He knows in his heart that it’s nonsense. He’s been blowing himself up with this grand idea, the poor darling—

“I’m going, Sylvia, all the same. I’m going to try. If I fail, I fail.”

So he doesn’t see it. Or he sees it but he won’t admit it. Very well, then.

“All right, Conrad; then I’m coming with you.”

“You are not.”

“Oh, yes. I can’t stop you; you can’t stop me.”

“You can’t.” But for the first time his voice wavered.

“What’s to hinder me? I’ve only got to walk down to Cook’s and get my passport visaed. It isn’t a fake one. And then, my dear, I stick to you like glue.” Her confidence grew: I hold the cards, I hold the cards after all. “And when we get to Dover or wherever it is, I just say, ‘Look here, this gentleman’s travelling on a false passport; if you don’t believe me, just investigate.’ And somebody blows a whistle and up comes a bobby and—”

He sprang forward suddenly and seized her shoulders; his face was white as a sheet; his fingers bit into her flesh.

“Look here, Sylvia! Are you serious about this?” Don’t break my neck . . . I was never more serious in my life.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“I’d dare anything to stop you making a fool of yourself, to stop you throwing yourself away. Even if you tell me you’ll never speak to me again. You’re much too good for that. . . Oh, Conrad, do see it! If you want to help your people, stay here and work for them. Get a place ready for them. Set up a clinic. Start a fund. Do something practical and sensible. We shall have them over here soon enough—in thousands. It’s people like you they’ll want . . . Darling, it was a lovely plan and I love you for it, but it was just downright daft.”

“Well, let me try it.”

“I won’t. If you start I’ll come with you. And if I come with you, I’ll stop you somehow. Even if you break my neck first. I’ll ring up Scotland Yard, I’ll have you stopped before you leave London . . . Conrad! You’re hurting . . .”

He took his hands away from her shoulders. He said very bitterly, “So that’s what you call friendship.”

“That’s what I call friendship. And you ought to be glad you’ve somebody who takes enough interest in you. Somebody who cares for you enough to stop you making a fool of yourself, to stop you killing yourself—”

He said—oh! so coldly—“So you take enough interest?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You know I do.”

“I don’t. I thought I was a Jew.”

Sylvia stared at him in terror. He’s been thinking over that, it’s rankled, I’ve lost him. I deserve it. Oh, God, don’t let me have lost him! I don’t care what he is . . .

“Conrad—”

“You don’t like Jews. You’re afraid of Jews. Isn’t that what you told me?”

“I said—I said—”

“You said that. If that’s so, you haven’t any right—” Sylvia burst suddenly into blinding tears. Fumbling in her handbag, she pulled out Axey’s letter.

“If you think I haven’t any right to you, read that!”

It fell to the floor; he picked it up. Sylvia turned her face into one of Lettuce’s cretonne cushions; strange how I always seem to cry nowadays . . . There was a considerable silence. Peeping through her fingers at last, she saw him staring at the letter, holding it out to her.

“Well—I’ve seen it.” But his face has changed; a little.

“You see what he says.”

“I see.”

“He says, ‘I entrust him to you.’ Conrad, supposing he’d been alive, supposing you’d told him this absolutely idiotic plan of yours—what would he have said?”

“He’d have understood. Better than you.”

“Yes. And he’d have stopped you—quicker than me. Well, he’s not here to do it. So I’m going to. Make up your mind to it.”

He pushed the letter back into her bag. “You’re very kind.”

“I think I am; and I think you might be nicer about it. But—oh, look here, Conrad, you know that isn’t the only reason. Axey isn’t, I mean. I stood between you and trouble once before. There was a reason then and it’s the same reason now. I can’t lose you, Conrad; you mustn’t lose me. I’m sorry, but there it is. Honest-to-God.”

He said very slowly, “Perhaps—”

“There’s no perhaps. You can’t get on without me. Axey said so. Axey knew . . . Look here, Conrad, don’t be hard on me. You know quite well what I’m trying to say; it’s difficult don’t make it worse. I’m a woman; women don’t like admitting their mistakes. So don’t—”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You will in a minute . . . Conrad, I’ve been a fool—I know I have. I’ve said ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and ‘maybe’ and ‘maybe not’. I’ve been utterly tiresome. If you’d gone to Germany without telling me, if I’d lost you for good and all, it would have served me right.”

“But, Sylvia—”

“Shut up! I’m going to say this once and once only and I won’t say it twice for anybody. I’ve been a damned fool and I’m sorry for it. Is that plain enough?”

There was a second silence.

“If you're saying what I think you are—"

“I'm saying what you think I am."

“Well, then, if I don't go—if I stay here—"

“Well, Conrad?"

“You'll stay with me?"

“Yes."

“You'll marry me?"

“Yes."

“Immediately?"

"Yes!"

XXVIII

“Darling Sylvia, Will you do a sweetness for me? Will you get me a cutting from that wistaria that grew under my window at the Hall? If the grocer isn’t there you can pinch it, and if he is you can vamp him for it. You could vamp anybody, beautiful, really and truly you could. Anyway be a sweetie-pet and get it for me somehow . . . This place is just too Pins d’Azur altogether. René says to tell you he hasn’t enjoyed anything so much since he was planting sugar-cane on Kerguelen Island. He did pull your leg, didn’t he, darling? Mud in your eye, my sweet. From Quashy.”

So Sylvia, who had reckoned on never seeing Humbug Hall again, found herself taking the Green Line Bus once more. “You will pass on the left an inn called the Green Goat. Two hundred yards beyond that there is a red signpost, a red signpost” . . . Red is for danger; I should have been warned; but then one never is. I Didn’t Take the Gypsy’s Warning . . . Today there was no Rule, no black BKL because it wasn’t BLacK; in stupidly mild November sunshine Sylvia walked the two miles to Hambling. Now there was a young man who was a Pacifist and is now in the Air Force; there was a young woman who was finished with life and is now to be married the day after tomorrow. To someone she had not then seen or heard of. Dear, dear!

There being no great probability of air raids at the moment, the grocer was not at his hidey-hole; in the faded sunlight Humbug Hall spread its unadorned facade to its untended garden. Sylvia thought, So it does exist; it wasn’t, as I was almost beginning to believe, a dream. Here was, a few months ago, a container of human entities, a frame for destiny; now all its creatures—its odd creatures—are scattered to the winds. Portia is Concording and Crusading in America—where, if all accounts are true, she should receive a warm welcome; the Man Who Was is finished now in earnest. (And serve him right, the silky little beast.) There is no such person as Pringle—but then there never was. Curled up inside Quashy there is resolute business-like little animal nourishing itself to emerge one day as a perpetuation of the incredible. Pringle’s daughter; Quashy’s son; conjunctions of words which will hardly translate into sense . . . Rule is testing contacts at Cranwell or perhaps he is measuring out oil at Uxbridge. And I; and I . . .

Sylvia sat down on that stone seat in the garden where today no Bearded Lady could pursue. July to November is four months; how much can happen in four months! Trite reflection; yet reflect upon it. They talk about four months hard; I’ve had four months fast. What I’ve gone through in them! Beginning from that shot in the night at Highgate—a starter’s pistol was that indeed, to set events racing. And if so much has happened in the last four months, how much can happen in the next four? Will there be a next four? We do not live, as did our fathers and mothers, with assured futures; where they talked in years, we can talk at best in weeks. We are reduced to the level of gnats and dragonflies—ephemerae knowing only a present, a Now. Any fine day these flying men may come with their phosgene bombs and their thermite incendiaries and their Novit torpedoes. Next time there may be no Chamberlain with an umbrella to hold over all our heads . . .

It was very still in the garden; a bird sang somewhere sweetly and slow. Birds sang in the dawn at Highgate; birds sing now in the evening at Humbug Hall; who wouldn’t be a bird? . . . Now this Hall was a Humbug and a fraud; yet it looked all right, so far as appearances went it might have gone on for ever. And there are Humbug Hall states and stretches in life; they too look all right, they might go on for ever. But they mustn’t be allowed to. One has to break out of them; to seize the essential—as I have seized Conrad; then the rest disappears—as Humbug Hall has disappeared. One must not live in static Humbug dreams; no, no—crank up the engine, get moving, keep moving. Keep moving so fast that it is always Now and nothing else. Fast, faster, prestissimo!

What wonderful thoughts I am having . . . or do I just think they are? There is an allegory in it all if I could only straighten it out . . . Pilgrim’s Progress? . . . Kafka? . . . I must go and get Quashy’s cutting or I shall fall asleep.

This is Now, this November afternoon; it has a beauty which is also Now and will not last. This Now—this quiet afternoon and me wandering in the garden of Humbug Hall and thinking these bonehead thoughts and getting Quashy’s wistaria. Me being here is Now; and me going home to meet Conrad, that is Now also . . .

Now! That’s the thing that matters. Snatch it!

The End