Eva's apples

And we eat and we drink and we revel, till the music grows plaintive and sorrowful, and I dance with Zita, while the band complains:

And she, poor girl, looked it. Eva had robbed her of all her admirers, including Count Kolberg. Melancholy music breeds melancholy thoughts. As we return to the table I overhear Mrs. Kerr complaining to the Colonel: ‘We cultured Russians of the intellectual class have suffered badly in the Revolution....’ And there she was, pessimistic about life, pessimistic about the outcome of their lawsuit, no money, no home, lawyers mostly frauds....

“‘Stop that music!’ cries the Comptroller.

“The music stops. ‘What will you have instead?’ the head waiter and bandmaster ask readily.

“‘O! Katerina!’

“And Mrs. Kerr shuffles along in the clumsy Colonel’s arms to the ragamuffin beat.

“‘A very nice, sincere, understanding man, and a deep thinker,’ was her comment as, bowed out by the band and the waiters, we come out into the early morning frost.

“‘Zita, dear, what is the matter with you?’

“She did not answer. I walked home beside her, not then aware of what she thought and felt; but afterwards she told me. Ever since she was a child she had a sort of psychic complex: she thought that she was mad and that everybody was hiding it from her. Her old grandfather in Ireland could not see Zita, who had golden hair, without tears, for her flaming hair recalled to him her dead grandmother. Whereas Zita thought that Grandpapa cried because he knew that she was mad. Her stern old grandfather, who thought nothing of saying to his guests sitting out on the stairs during a ball, ‘The stairs were made to walk on, not to sit on. Get up!’ crying at the thought of her affliction! And now she knew that she was mad, ghastly, desperately mad, and that they were all hiding it from her. She thought, thought, thought of it, and all to no purpose. She knew an uncanny lot without thinking; but when she thought she knew nothing at all. And she decided that she was uncommonly dull—that was it: mad, mad beyond hope and repair!

“The sudden cessation of attention on the part of Graf Kolberg and the barons was due to her madness. Somebody must have blurted it out. Clearly they shunned her. Going over, in a body, to ‘Me-Too.’ How awful. This was the end of all things.

“There are moments when we positively seek humiliation. ‘Me-Too’ had taken all her partners from her, had left her destitute and lonely. But she felt, in her extremity, the need to propitiate the victor by an admission of her helplessness, her complete prostration, put all her cards before her, make her responsible for her next move, the invading enemy who must needs assume responsibility for the welfare of the population in the area he has occupied. Take it, curse you, my last rag of self-respect and exult in the completeness of your victory! This is the spirit in which, on reaching home, Zita must have faced her younger sister. She confessed that she was mad and that she knew that they were hiding it from her. She stood ashamed, expectant, with head bent, as if to say, ‘Now there! What can you think of it?’ while ‘Me-Too,’ half undressed, lay on the bed, and pondered. She pondered a long time over this doleful piece of news, with insight, a profound and melancholy understanding. ‘I think,’ she said at last, ‘we are both mad....’

“‘You’re crazy!’ Zita cried.

“Suddenly she felt sane, terrifyingly, devastatingly sane.”

III.

“Ha!” said Lord Ottercove. “Was it like that?”

“I keep pretty close to life where I can,” answered Dickin.

“Well, go on. What happened to the woman, Mrs. Kerr?”

“They could not afford to stay on at the pension, and they took a room and a kitchen in town, for the four of them. But she would not cut out the dances.

“‘You know, Frederick Fyodorovich, what I’ll tell you. I am disappointed in Tamara Leonidovna. As you know, all our things have been confiscated by the bailiff. Everything, everything! But I managed to smuggle through a bedroom carpet to a friend of mine at Bozen, and I gave Tamara Leonidovna 500.000 Kronen, over thirty shillings, to go to Bozen and bring the carpet. But my friend in Bozen, when she saw her, got positively frightened of Tamara Leonidovna, who really looks forbidding. A dark-haired, dark-eyed woman, just like a Gipsy. Those lips, those consuming eyes. She is terribly sensual, you know.’

“‘Is she?’

“‘You don’t mean to say that you haven’t noticed it?’

“‘I haven’t.’

“‘Hasn’t she made any advances to you?’

“‘No.’

“Mrs. Kerr thought for a space. ‘Well, all the more honour to her, then. Because, you can see by her face and whole figure how hard it is for her to bridle her passions. The tram-driver, Herr König, won’t have her come near him now that they’re divorced. He has another woman. And poor Tamara Leonidovna, who has been used to a married life, doesn’t know what to do with herself. But she leads, I think, an exemplary life. And all the more honour to her, I say—but it’s not good, it’s a strain on her. Well, the lady got such a fright when she saw Tamara Leonidovna that she would not give the carpet. And Tamara Leonidovna got so scared of the lady being scared to death of her that when the lady did offer to give her the carpet Tamara Leonidovna wouldn’t take it. And her German, as you know, is not up to much.

“‘“Why didn’t you take the carpet when she offered it, Tamara Leonidovna?” I cried when she returned on Saturday, empty-handed—just as I am waving my hair to go to the Hôtel d’Europe ball. Imagine my position: I hadn’t a Krone left. The last went to pay for the entrance tickets, for I was counting on Tamara Leonidovna returning with the bedroom carpet. And my hair already waved. And here she stands and says: “She wouldn’t give the carpet.” And looks at me like that—uncertainly, and adds: “Besides, I was afraid of the Customs.”

“‘“The Customs?” I say. “Then you did have a chance to get the carpet from her?”

“‘“I had a chance ...” she says, uncertainly.

“‘“Then why—why—why (I was so angry that I shook the curling tongs at her) tell me ... otherwise?” I wanted to say “a lie,” but restrained myself.

“‘“Ah, if that’s the way you talk to me, after all my kindness to you, good-bye to you,” she said, and slammed the door behind her.

“‘I rushed off to the station restaurant, where my husband always dines with the Rittmeister. “Charles!” I cried, “that woman has come back without the carpet! What am I to do now? I am dressed for the ball and I’ve ordered the table and I’ve no money to pay for the champagne supper! What am I to do, Charles?’”

“‘And what did he do?’

“‘He cursed me, Fyodor Ferdinandovich. Cursed me, cursed me, cursed me—oh, terrible! He never talks to me now—only curses.’

“‘And the Rittmeister?’

“‘The Rittmeister laughed.’

“The Rittmeister must have laughed very contagiously, for, remembering how he laughed, Mrs. Kerr began to laugh too, at first quietly, then louder and louder, till her laughter became riotous. ‘What a life!’ she sighed, wiping the tears that had come to her eyes from laughing so heartily. ‘I have ceased to take myself, or my clothes, or my life, or my fate seriously. I only look and laugh, look in wonder, in astonishment—and laugh. But, as I tell you, I am disappointed in Tamara Leonidovna. And what language she uses! Like a cab-driver. I am grateful to God that my children do not know Russian. And that poor student she wants to marry!’

“‘Why “poor”?’

“‘She will consume him. She is fire.’

“‘Daddy ought to know her,’ from Zita.

“‘He knows her.’

“‘But closer.’

“However, they went to the Hôtel d’Europe ball and there they met Viscount de Jones, who knew them. And I presume he paid for the champagne supper.”

“Look here,” said Lord Ottercove, looking worried, “now you are actually using real names. Well-known names.”

Frank smiled.

“I have kept all the original names deliberately so as to attract your attention. I knew I would have to change them for publication. But this is a small matter.”

Lord Ottercove smiled, then leaned back and laughed. “That was clever of you! I must confess that but for the names my serial editor might have easily passed it over.... So de Jones paid, did he?” Lord Ottercove looked pensive.

“I presume so.”

“But actually you know who pays?”

“Who?”

Lord Ottercove pointed a forefinger at his own chest.

Frank Dickin looked at him with dull amazement, but as Lord Ottercove looked morose, did not press for explanation. “The silly woman rather advertised her connection with Lord de Jones and told me, as though she were giving me a hundred pounds, that she was going to introduce me to the noble lord! I hadn’t the slightest interest to meet him. A pretty big fool, I imagine, to judge by his tastes in women.”

“He has married my niece,” said Lord Ottercove.

“No!... I say, this is rather a brick I’ve let fall.”

“You mean to say you didn’t know it?”

“Well—how shall I say?—I did and I didn’t. I thought it would help to keep up your flagging interest in my serial if I introduced into it Hidden Hand bits from the back-door life of your relative. Not that I know much about him. We novelists have to rely largely on our own imagination. Though I remember now that Lord and Lady de Jones were on their honeymoon and put up at the Tirolerhof in Innsbruck.”

“That’s a bigger brick than the first.”

“I am so sorry.”

“Not a bit of it. I don’t think you realise that what interests me most in your serial is not what de Jones does but why he does it. What it is that attracts him so in Mrs. Kerr. It must be nearly twenty years now since he first met her, I believe, in Russia. Or was she already married? And now I realise. You have conveyed her character wonderfully well. I think it is that extraordinary irresponsibility, that—that—that something else. It’s there, I feel it, though I can’t for the moment describe the peculiar fascination. What else can it be? Is she still so good-looking?”

“Good-looking, no, but attractive. Her daughters have it from her.”

“He always goes back to her. It is the second time he is married. My niece should never have married him. But there is genius in him. He could have been a second Newton if he had wanted to. As it is he is a Genius of the Untried. They are all like that, the whole family. I have a great affection for him. But Eleonor is determined to divorce him. He’ll be quite penniless unless I find him something to do. But go on. What happened to the woman?”

“I lost sight of them soon after that dance, and Frau König told me they had gone off to Abbazia, while Lord de Jones had returned to England. I enquired about her own affairs. ‘Everything now depends on the knitting machine, which is due to arrive in March.’

“‘And your fiancé in Paris?’

“‘He is saving money for the factory. But imagine!’ she exclaimed, ‘in his last letter—so pathetic—he writes that the franc, owing to the political machinations of the Cartel des Gauches, has all gone to pieces and reduced the potential capital of our knitting factory.’

“We spoke of Mrs. Kerr. ‘Your Mrs. Kerr,’ said Tamara Leonidovna, ‘is a goose. Just a Great Big Goose.... What a fool that woman is! Not a cent in her pocket, not an idea in her top storey beyond dancing and pleasing men—at her age! A newly married man, too—just because he is a lord! Openly, before her daughters! What matter that she is divorced? I, too, am divorced and six years younger than she is, but I keep myself back.’ A look of strain came into her face. ‘I don’t let myself go.’ She set her jaw, clenched her fists. ‘I try to keep myself in check. I have more pride, more self-respect than ... than.... When he comes back from Paris then ... then ... then yes.’”

“Go on,” said Lord Ottercove.

IV.

DOGS AND NIGHTINGALES

“I saw nothing of them till the spring, when I had a surprise visit from Mrs. Kerr, looking considerably dilapidated. ‘Ach, Ferdinand Ferdinandovich, you won’t believe what I have been through in these two months! If I were a writer like you I would write a novel in the genre of Dostoevski, so true, and yet incredible, so poignant! I have begun a diary. I will bring it to you this afternoon. You can make use of it for your books.

“‘Lord de Jones lent me some money to go and have a thorough change and rest, and so Zita, Eva, John and I went to Abbazia. A lovely coast. Blue sea, sunshine, casino, roulette, chemin de fer, baccarat. A real change and rest for the nerves. All day we gamble, and at night dancing, flirtations. Both girls passionate gamblers, also John. But luck went against us and we found we had no more money to go on with. I pawned some of my things and we lived very comfortably for a time at the Grand Hotel—dancing, music, sea bathing twice a day and getting to know lots of very agreeable young men on the beach, and at night moonlight walks in the wood—in couples: Zita with the Italian boy; Eva with the young Dane; and I with the Spaniard Rodrigo. Or to the cinema—always in couples, Rodrigo looking at me with great passionate eyes. Very delightful and charming. When the money was exhausted, I found a post as housekeeper in a small pension overlooking the sea—very artistically situated—and Zita, Eva and John were taken in by a lady friend of Rodrigo’s, a very nice, quiet, well-read woman. I was busy all day in the kitchen which gives out into the garden, and the children, looking so gay and fresh in their white summer things, would be coming to see me all the time. And I’d say to them, “Go and play in the garden,” and I would give them things through the window, as the lady friend of Rodrigo’s could not provide them with food. “There you are, children, take this and this and this,” and I’d give them cakes, coffee, sugar, sweets, dainties, pastry, everything, and they’d take it home and eat it and come back for more. And I’d give them more through the window, all kinds of preserved meats and provisions: “Here you are, children,” and they never went short of anything while I was housekeeper there. But—but would you believe it, Fyodor Frederickovich? The landlady, seeing me give nourishment to my children, gave me the sack. If it had been for myself, I understand, but for the children! I have noticed a strange insensibility in those people, a hardness, a general—how shall I say?—unfeelingness. No love, no understanding of children. I just looked at her like that—I could say nothing. I could not have expressed what was in my heart. A feeling of sorrow, not of anger. And as I took my things and passed her on the doorstep I just turned my head to her: “In Russia this could not have been,” and went without a word.

“‘Outside, in the street, the children around me, I stop and ask: “All-wise and loving God,” I ask, “why dost Thou punish me so? Why?”

“‘From there I got into the Grand Hotel as “Kaffee-Köchin” and all day long I had to boil coffee, first for the clients, then for the hotel staff—all day long boil coffee and nothing but coffee. They gave me a tiny little room on the roof, overlooking an unfinished church, and at night dogs would come to sleep in that church and howl hungrily—dogs; and up in the trees, nightingales. I opened the window. Below in the square, lilac shrubs in bloom. The scent of lilac. And thoughts, like a bevy of bees, stung my heart. I remembered our dear Russia when I was a young girl, my mother a young woman, my father, my two brothers, and how I felt and how I hoped. It all came back—Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Dostoevski—and hot tears streamed down my cheeks. “Dear God,” I said, “to think what was once! and what is now! Come back, days of youth, of my innocence, and hot faith in the divinity of Thy Creation, Thy Love! Vague dreams of my heart, virgin and untouched, of my unsullied soul, come back, come back!...” The breath of Spring. Dogs, an unfinished church, you know ... and those nightingales, all the night through. Dogs and nightingales.

“‘All day long I boiled coffee. I went by the name of “Frau Kaffeeköchin,” for I alone in the whole hotel was to boil coffee and I wasn’t to do anything else. From six in the morning till ten at night I boiled coffee. But at half past ten I would put on my yellow satin gown and sit out on the Casino terrace, order a vermouth, light a cigarette, and never in a thousand years would it occur to anyone that the smart, elegantly gowned, romantic-looking woman sitting out on the Casino terrace and looking, you might say, like a Queen of the Steppes, was the Frau Kaffeeköchin of the Grand Hotel. And one night as I sit there, an old beggar, sick, filthy, stenchy, all in rags, and barefoot, comes up to me. “Here, beggar,” I give him a copper, and he holds out his hand and introduces himself: “Captain of the Imperial Russian Navy, Nobleman Khan Balalykin.” Yes, Khan Balalykin—a Tartar Prince! And, do you know, Ferdinand Ferdinandovich, he fell in love with me? What am I to do? Where I go he follows me. “No,” he says, “I cannot live without you,” and looks at me with soft, love-lorn eyes. And also calls me “My Queen of the Steppes.” Or quotes a lyric from Lermontov. Well, we made a night of it, and spoke of Russia. Next morning I return to the hotel to work; he after me, right into the kitchen. “Sit down, Captain,” I say, “here is meat, bread, cheese, butter, beer. Eat and drink, it will do you good, restore your strength a bit.” He tucked in, oblivious of everything, poor old man, he looked so starved; but here the head cook, a huge great man, comes in—a great big animal with a short, thick neck, just like an ox—horrible!—an obnoxious big bully, the real cave man. And, would you believe it, Ferdinand Fyodorovich, begins to remonstrate with Captain Khan Balalykin, who is peacefully tucking in at the table? But I wasn’t going to be bullied by this ox of a man. “Don’t you dare shout at me,” I screamed, “I’m not afraid of you. I care that much for your being head cook. In Russia at one time one used to beat one’s cook when one wasn’t satisfied with him, and I, the daughter of Pàvel Yàkovlevich Sabolenko, won’t stand any of your nonsense, I can tell you!” Well, I thought this would pacify him a little. But no! The ox shouts and storms more than ever and begins to insult Captain Khan Balalykin. Well, I wasn’t going to have my guest reviled and insulted. He may look dirty and all that, which is not surprising in his sphere as a beggar, but he is a real gentleman of the old school, a captain of the Russian Navy, graduated with Honours at the Imperial Naval Academy, and the bully is a common ignorant Austrian cook. I took the big brass pan with the potatoes and crashed it to the ground: I was so angry. Well, he begins shouting madder than ever and kicks Captain Khan Balalykin out of the kitchen and then fetches in the manager and points at me and the potatoes on the floor and screams: “It’s she!” And the pair of them begin to scream at me together, though I can scream as loud as they together. “No—it’s he!—he!—he!” I scream, and go for both of them with my fists. Insulting a distinguished Russian officer, an old nobleman, Khan Balalykin, a graduate of the Imperial Naval Academy: I was so wild!

“‘Well, do you know, Fyodor Ferdinandovich, the manager being hand in glove with the head cook, gave me the sack. I pawned my last ruby ring and we all came back this morning. In Milan we ran across Fräulein von Wiesendorf, and we all came back together.’

“‘And how is she?’ I asked.

“‘Well, it seems from all the drinking bouts during the Fasching and the late hours Fräulein von Wiesendorf got the colics and a sort of nervous breakdown. Her father, who is Comptroller of Public Morals, alarmed at his daughter’s condition, called in the doctor, who examined Fräulein von Wiesendorf and found symptoms of the beginnings of consumption and ordered her immediately, without a moment’s loss or hesitation, at railway speed to Italy. “As fast as the train will carry you!” he said. Fräulein von Wiesendorf throws a few odd things into a bag and darts off, helter-skelter, to Italy and arrives, holus-bolus, in Genoa and as she has no means takes a post as governess to children. Nine children of assorted ages. She has to teach and feed and wash for them and take them out for walks, and the children all veritable devils, real Machiavellis, cruel, mischievous, teasing her, and the parents exigent and stingy. In a month poor Fräulein von Wiesendorf was worn to a shadow; a doctor was called in, examined her and—“Back home!” he said, “at full tilt! As fast as you can fly!” She arrived in hot haste this morning. To-morrow night we are making a last night of it, and the day after I am off to Abbazia.’

“‘What! again!’

“‘To get the ruby ring back from the pawn-shop. I’ve borrowed some money here on the strength of my caracole coat.’

“‘And how are Zita, Eva and John?’

“‘The children are so happy. As we had no quarters to go to on arrival we went and sat in the Hofpark and we’ve chummed up with four Bulgarian students: two small ones, a thin one, and a big one. The two small ones have fallen in love with Zita and Eva. the thin one with Fräulein von Wiesendorf, and the big one with me. I must be off now to look for a room for the children, and don’t forget to ask them for my diary.’”

V.

PALE PRIMROSES THAT DIE UNMARRIED

“I met Zita, Eva and John a few days later crossing the Maria-Theresienstrasse on their way to their sparse meal at the cheap restaurant under the arch. They were rather short of money, but full of enthusiasm on account of the Bulgarian students. ‘We spend all our time with them in the Hofpark,’ they told me. Later I saw them home to their room—a poor room tucked away behind someone else’s kitchen; one narrow bed for the two girls and a little sofa for John. ‘And doesn’t your father bother about you?’ I asked.

“‘Daddy’s gone back to Ireland.’

“We decided, in the absence of the mother, to make a climbing expedition to the top of the Patscherkofl mountain and arranged to meet at four o’clock next morning. It was still dark as we set out, clad in the appropriate mountaineering fashion: alpenstock and rucksack; the girls in Tyrolese peasant dress: short skirt, tight waist; John and I in blue coat and leather shorts, and leaving the still somnolent streets of the town behind us, began the ascent. At Igls we halted and breakfasted, then continued by the steep side wind through pine woods, as the red sun rose to meet us. John ran in front and behind, and Zita and Eva walked sprightly on either side of me, and we spoke of how nice it would be to make a hut in the pine woods or live in a cave. And to all Zita’s ‘I’s’ Eva said ‘we.’ By midday we reached Heiligwasser, famed for the miraculous cure of the sick, and unpacked our rucksacks for lunch; then continued the winding ascent. The Inn Vale now stretched deep beneath us. More mountains, like ghost ships on an uncharted sea, loomed into sight as we climbed the spiral grass-edged path, encountering more flowers on our way: snow-drops, buttercups, daisies, bluebells, primulas, violets, while little brooks scurried down head over heels to announce that Spring was already come. An hour’s distance from our goal, we spread out our mantles on the green slope of a sheltered warm valley where daffodils grew in profusion by the side of a brook and stretched our limbs and dozed rapturously in the sun.

“Profusion is not a good thing. So I mused, watching the two sisters, each so exquisite in her own way that at once when you began to focus your attention on the one, you were diverted from her by the other. They thus neutralised each other’s charm to a great extent and dissipated your affection. And lying with them in the sun I watched them lustless, in benignant peace. How beautiful life could be for a space!

“Rising, we set out on the last but one stage in our journey, climbing hills without paths, cutting across pastures where frisky young cows, turned irresponsible on these heights, jumped over the moon; now clearing gurgling brooks which still ran hurry-scurry down to the valleys to tell the glad tidings; now stooping to drink the cool water. By two we reached the top of the shaggy mountain slope: above loomed the gleaming naked dead rock of the summit. A separate journey, after an hour’s repose.

“At the Gasthaus we drank beer and booked accommodation for the night; then lay on the edge of a plateau projecting perilously over the void and looked down at Innsbruck, miniature like on a map, the river Inn bedded in the soft, green folds of the valley, the parcelled fields, the dotted villages, the spired churches, all lucent and serene in the spring sun. Leaving John asleep in the tavern, we climbed the steep rocky way to the peak, clinging to loose stones and sending them rolling a mile or two till they rebounded with a heavy earthen thud in the abyss. No more shrubs or alpine roses; nor a human habitation anywhere. The last was the Gasthaus, which is now lost to sight. On we climb till, in the first dusk, we reach the flat rocky mountain-top: there is nowhere higher to go. The girls frolic and gambol like frisky gazelles: the air is amazingly light. But I sat away on a rock, struck speechless by the mighty spectacle. The neighbouring mountain-peaks, all level now and grandly equal, looked on into the gathering dusk, heavy with a silent utterance.

“What is it when, the veil lifted, he beholds how lovely it all was in the beginning?...

“But as the rocky summits, like ghostly dreadnaughts anchored in doom’s waters, closed their eyes in the ensuing gloom, we hastened to retrace our steps towards the Gasthaus. Zita was in a hurry to get back to John. The paths diverged to all sides of us. We were afraid lest darkness should overtake us before we reached the Gasthaus, and, agreeing all on the necessity for haste, disagreed as to which path we ought to follow. Zita thought she knew a shorter way to the inn than the one we had come by, whereat Eva and I doubted, and stuck to the old path, or what we imagined to be the old path, which led us untowardly down the steep edge of the mountain, as Zita quickly vanished on the other side. When you look at a hill from below, it all seems perfectly easy and simple: you either walk up or else you walk down, according to whether you wish to find yourself at the top or the bottom. But as you begin to descend you find that the hill has a trick of breaking into new hills, new valleys, new precipices, that, having at length reached the foot of your hill, you are still at the top of another, and rounding it to get into the valley, you are thwarted by another precipice. Once Zita appeared far away, it seemed on the edge of a fourth hill; then vanished. We shouted as loud as our voices would carry; the wind took our words but brought us none back. Dusk fell upon us rapidly, and stones rolled dangerously beneath our feet, as we felt our way down the slippery steep rock. Soon it was too dark to move at all. We sat down on a stony slope, and Eva cried. I could have done so myself, with the exhaustion and nervous tension and vexation of it all; but her tears accomplished the trick for me. We were even too tired to eat. It was fresh in the dark, but not cold. We thought that Zita was back now and asleep with John at the inn. We spread our mantels and, sooner than we knew, we slept.

“In the night there was a storm, and we ran hand in hand down the slippery stones in search of shelter; and then hid ourselves under a rock.

“At dawn we were up, and having eaten of the contents of our rucksacks, we set afoot in search of the path, keeping together for fear of worse things. When a moving dot of a figure appeared across the wide gulf that separated us from another chain of rocks, we shouted and waved, and the figure waved back. Thinking it must be a man from the Gasthaus, we waved more and shouted ourselves hoarse. Manœuvring, the figure and we came nearer; we could dimly hear it shouting to us, presumably explaining the direction. Then, as it neared, we recognised Zita’s scarf flying in the wind, and then her voice asking for the way. We began a mad rush to each other across trackless slopes of naked rock, till, meeting finally on neutral ground in a small valley, she told us of the fearful night she spent alone and burst into sobs. With breaks for food, we continued our search, all keeping together, till the sun sank behind the mountains and the shadows crept up and, once again, it was night.

“We slept huddled together, and thought of John alone at the inn. Still, the Wirt would take care of him, and, compared with us, he was comfortable.

“In the course of next day we reconnoitred all round the summit and found ourselves trapped: very evidently the one pass connecting the rock with the main body of the hill had fallen away. We were cut off from the rest of the world, isolated on the naked rock which, like a tooth, sloped down at an angle we could not hope to descend without being swept into the precipice by the stones which barely piled on its steep sides and every now and then rolled off into the abyss. This was, we realised, what must have happened to the one connecting link by which we had ascended to the peak of the mountain, now clearly inaccessible except possibly by air.

“We began to ration our supplies and wait for relief. Surely the people at the Gasthaus where John still waited for us would do something? By the following day we began to doubt whether our provisions could possibly last out another day. Doubtless the Gasthaus people were searching for us; but how would they reach us with the pass missing? Where could they get an aeroplane? Munich was the nearest centre. Or perhaps John, quicksilver that he was, had left soon after us and the people at the inn concluded that we had all returned to Innsbruck.

“The day after was glorious and hot, and towards midday we had cleared our last supplies. We lay on the ground and felt very still and odd. I watched Zita lying on her belly, her long legs stretched out and apart. The sun was beating on us. Luckily there was no lack of water. How long could one last out on water? And would the rescue come at all? We did not say it to one another. We seemed to know and feel it that the other understood. They were young; it was a pity. For it seemed, though the weather was so beautiful, uncommonly like the end. The spring, and they so young. And death yawning to claim our bones. Somehow as I lay there watching them, these lines from Shakespeare swung back into my heart—

At that moment Zita turned a look, molten gold from the sun, upon me. Why should she?

“We kissed under the hot rays of the sun, taking the last it had to offer us before it withdrew its rays to shine on us no more.

“And then it was that Eva, whom I had forgotten, caught my look and said:

“‘Me too.’”

Lord Ottercove interrupted the reading with an astonished—“Ha!”, sprang up with that agility characteristic of him and which testified to his success, went over to the sideboard and mixed himself some whisky. Frank must have discerned disapproval in the gurgling notes of the whisky as it poured down into his lordship’s cavity, for, “Dammit, sir,” he protested, “the sun, spring, death crouching at you, the end of life in time, and these pale primroses to die unmarried—”

“Are you—I don’t quite understand—defending the book or your conduct?”

“That is—”

“Yes?” The noble lord now looked like a magistrate.

“I don’t think this is a fair question.”

“I agree.—Go on.”

“Reading?”

“Of course.”

“I think I’ve read enough.”

“My dear fellow, you can’t stop like that. I am dying to know what happened.”

“What happened?... Dammit, sir,” Dickin said, “is a fellow to blame for getting saved?”

“All saved?”

“All. They came and found us the day after. A picnic party from Innsbruck. The pass had not been destroyed as we imagined, and indeed there were several passes. We’d made a mistake. I am not very clever at mountaineering, you know. Nor the girls, either. John, as we had suspected, had slipped down to Innsbruck almost immediately on waking, thinking we had gone back to town. So all’s well that ends well.”

“Rather terrible that, what?” said Lord Ottercove.

“Dammit, sir, I appeal to your idealism. Yawning death. Pale primroses to die unmarried.... No escape. I tell you we thought we were for ever lost.”

“Didn’t you think so too readily?”

“I deprecate this attempt to abuse the autonomy of a work of literature.”

“So it is merely literature?”

“I don’t think it’s fair to my characters of you to ask.”

“Read on!” laughed Lord Ottercove.

VI.

THE QUEEN OF THE STEPPES

“In the autumn I was in Vienna. One day as I returned from a walk the maid in the pension told me that two ladies were waiting for me in my room. Who but Mrs. Kerr and Eva! My first thought was: Does the mother know? But from her ebullient flow I soon perceived that all was well.

“A long tale. She had come back with the ruby ring and for some time at all events they lived quite comfortably on the proceeds. When they had spent their last, ‘I went,’ she said, ‘and threw myself on the charity of the police authorities, who were very kind and sent the three of us, John, Eva, and myself, by goods train to Vienna. An English lady had taken Zita back to England with her as a companion. Arrived in Vienna, I went straight to the policeman on the platform and said: “Here we are—destitute, without means. What do you propose to do with us?” It’s always better to be downright: no good doing things by half. Once destitute, throw all responsibility on the police. He looked very worried and said: “Follow me,” and took us to the gendarme, who told us to wait in the waiting-room. We waited three or four hours. Meanwhile the first policeman came back, with a confused look and something clenched in his fist. “I am not a rich man,” he said, opening his fist, “but please accept that.” I was touched. 30.000 Kronen—almost two shillings. The gendarme came to invite us into his chief’s office. A nice grey-haired old gentleman. He had tears in his eyes as he looked at the children, and was all milk and honey when I related to him of our Schloss in Meran, now in the hands of the Italians, and said softly: “Sic transit gloria mundi!”

“‘Anyhow, they took John off my hands. They put him in an orphanage. You won’t believe how nice it is for him there. Never been so happy before! Warm and cosy and plenty of boys of his own age to play with. And, do you know, he heckles them all and fights them. We visited him the next day, Eva and I. He was at his midday meal. Very good food. But he said, “Mummy, what is the matter with this meat? It chews and chews and doesn’t eat up.” Made them all laugh.

“‘“Me-Too” and I were conveyed to the workhouse. And, fancy, crossing the Landstrasse-Hauptstrasse, we saw two of the Bulgarian students—the thin one and one of the small ones. Eva shouted to them across the street, but they couldn’t hear. The workhouse—not too bad, only no privacy. A huge barrack-like room and lots of low, fallen women who use dreadful language. I don’t like it on Eva’s account. Yesterday, when “Me-Too” came in and left the door open, there was such a volley of abuse from an old hag that I shut my ears so as not to hear. But Eva said never a word, only looked at her like that. You could see the race in her.

“‘We found out your address through police records—they are really so well organised in this town—and, well, we’ve come to see you and to ask if you won’t take us out to some dance or other to-night. We are so tired of the regulation workhouse meals. I still have my smart yellow satin gown in which Khan Balalykin admired me so much and thought I looked like a Queen of the Steppes. And “Me-Too” still has her orange crepe-de-Chine gown. She hid it in her purse—it folds ever so small—when the bailiffs came into our Schloss in Meran and took everything away from us.’

“I expressed my willingness, my pleasure. I asked her tactfully if I could not lend her a little money. She took the note with charming simplicity, ‘on condition,’ she said, ‘that you will let me pay it back later—when things mend up in Russia.’

“At the cabaret, the ‘Nachtlokal,’ which she had selected as being the most elegant according to her husband when in the affluent old days he used to take her to Vienna for the season, she nevertheless complained of the general inferiority and paucity of Vienna night life as compared with that of Petrograd or Moscow, and that brought her back again to Russia. ‘Ach, Russia!... We upper classes in Russia have been thrown in the dirt and trampled on with the muddy feet of the coarse proletariat.’ It would have been heartless for me to remind her of the complete independence of her personal misfortunes of the fate of Russia, heartless and uncalled for, ‘But we will go back and find, I truly expect and believe, our reward in riches and pleasures as yet undreamt of, and then when you come and visit us there, Fyodor Ferdinandovich, we shall have such a binge together as will outshine anything previously known in that line.’

“‘Of course we will,’ I said tenderly, laying my hand on her own.

“‘I believe in it!’ she cried, ‘hotly and passionately! In the face of all the calamities and disasters falling upon me, it shall not be said that I have lost faith!’ She looked passionately at the orchestra.

“I filled her champagne glass. The band played doleful music. She touched my arm. ‘But I do not regret these experiences. The kind hearts, the interesting people one comes to meet. That policeman. The grey-haired Colonel’s tears.’ Her eyes filled; and, indeed, she looked at that moment like ‘the Madonna kissing the finger-tips of her Child.’ ‘And, you know, even the workhouse women. That old hag who shouted so at “Me-Too”—well, I’ve chummed up with her. Not a bad woman at heart. She has had a hard life. A great beauty. An early seduction....’

“She sighed. ‘We have no luck. Imagine, my mother has managed to get out of Russia at last and even smuggle through some jewelry, so Eva and I both wrote to her to be quick and send us some money till the authorities can find us situations. But she is in Monte Carlo, gambling heavily, it seems, and writes back: “I can’t. I am bust.’”

“Eva, while her mother talked to me, flirted with me over her mother’s head. ‘Come and talk to me,’ her look seemed to say.

“It was cruel after the dance-supper to take them back in a taxi to the workhouse. But what could I do? I was, after paying for the supper, stony broke myself. I could not have arranged to keep them at an hotel indefinitely, and the authorities who were charged with finding work for them would have discontinued their efforts on their leaving the workhouse.

“A week later, she came in to me, jubilant. They had both got positions, Eva as nurse to small children, Mrs. Kerr as housekeeper to a solitary Austrian colonel. ‘An intellectual, original man. We read Dostoevski together and I am keeping a journal which eventually I hope to develop into a novel. We are both of us so happy, Ferdinand Fyodorovich—’

“‘Fomitch,’ I corrected. ‘My father was called Tom—Foma, in Russian.’

“‘ ...Ferdinand Fomitch, that we want you to take us out this evening, make a night of it. The other night “Me-Too” and I went out to a night club together, to celebrate our release from the workhouse and our good fortune in getting situations so soon, and we struck up an acquaintance with two Russian gentlemen: Ivan Andrèiech Zshikov, and the other: Fyodor Yàkovlevich Suhomlinski. Suhomlinski fell in love at first sight with “Me-Too”; and Zshikov with me. Zshikov has long almond eyes and looks like that into mine all the time. Jokes, little flirtations. Very delightful and charming. From there we went together to another cabaret. In the street some other unknown men fell into step with us, and we all went along together to an underground tavern—like the one in Innsbruck, only larger and gayer. And all the men in love—either with Eva or me. All Russians in exile, huddled together, helping one another to bear up. Very charming and touching. The Hussar Kòlenka Shavèlenkov; Olèg Aleksèiech Pevtsòff, disappointed in love and seeking a meaning in life; and Captain of Lancers, Rotmister von Bologovski. Yes, calls himself “von”—“von Bologovski.” All intellectual, original people. We revel till three in the morning, and, do you know, when Eva had to go back to her charges the mistress made quite a scene, in spite of “Me-Too” explaining to her that she had been out with her mother; and nearly dismissed her. It was her first day there, you see. But I slipped in noiselessly with my latch key; my old Diogenes of a colonel was still snoring, and there are no servants. He leaves early and does not come back till six. So I give little parties when he is away. I try to make a kind of Russian intellectual centre, to attract interesting, original people, a sort of nucleus of the Russian Colony in Vienna. A large dining room. I give them tea with lemon. They feel very pleased. All interesting, well-read people of unconventional views. Zshikov came, and Suhomlinski (to see Eva, who slips in with her elder charges when she can), and also Kòlenka Shavèlenkov, and Olèg Aleksèiech Pevtsòff, the disappointed, and the Lancer Rotmister von Bologovski; all came, drank tea and smoked and argued, very sincerely and passionately, about politics and art. I was very pleased on Eva’s account. Very beneficial and instructive for her. I was sorry Zita wasn’t there. But she writes this morning that she has left the English lady and has taken a post as professional dancing partner at a dancing place in Hammersmith. She is very pleased, for the lady she was companion to she says was a stuffy old thing.’”

VII.

“Well, I went to one or two of her intellectual tea parties, and once I just missed Lord de Jones by a hair’s breadth: he had left a minute or so before my arrival.”

“De Jones! You don’t say so!” exclaimed Lord Ottercove. “Ha!” And he shook his head.

“And how,” he asked after a pause, pulling out his watch and looking at it with mild alarm, “do you finish your serial? Does your hero marry both sisters and serve his time for bigamy?”

“No. I will read it to you.”

“Don’t: it suffices that I have your word for it. Shall I tell you what becomes of your characters?”

“Do.”

“Shall I tell you where they are?”

“Where?”

“Here. In London.”

“I know.”

“But do you know who got them to come over?”

“I can guess.”

“You’re good at guessing, are you? And can you guess why he got them over?”

“I think I have shown through the pages of my serial that I am not insensible to his interest in the mother.”

“Or in the daughter.”

“In the daughter!?”

“The younger daughter.”

“Eva? Great heavens!”

“I am happy,” said Lord Ottercove, “to be able to introduce into your serial this little touch of suspense. Indeed, if there is an element lacking in your story it is this element of suspense. Between you and me, it is an element entirely unimportant and one which, I have always found, interferes with the peaceful enjoyment of a story as it tells itself through the growth and actions of the characters. But it is, nevertheless, an element upon which serial editors insist as a matter of tradition. But I am going to change all that. I am, perhaps you have noticed, changing the tradition of journalism in this country.”

“For the better,” said Frank.

“What?”

“For the better,” said Frank.

“Now I like your story. I think it is a corking tale. I accept it for my newspapers, and what is more I will pay for it. Now what do you want for it?”

Frank hesitated only a moment. Better men than he owed their fortune to a bold word put in in the proper accent at the proper moment. Big men act bigly, so that their gestures may go down to history. And what did Shakespeare say? “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.”

He closed his eyes. “£10,000,” he said.

Now, despite the opening given him, Lord Ottercove did not avail himself of the immortal gesture. Or, perhaps he couldn’t recognise a tide in the affairs of another man.

“Ha!” he said, and leaned back. “If I—if I gave you—gave you—” (The sum seemed to stick in his throat), “gave you £10,000, my staff would think I’d gone right off my chump; and I should have, of course.”

He took up the receiver and said: “I want Mr. Wilson.” And turning back to the visitor: “I can’t do these things over the head of my serial editor. I can’t do these things over the heads of my editors,” he repeated; and again: “I can’t do these things—“, to fill the interval of time it took Mr. Wilson to reach the office. And now Mr. Wilson, with eyes and crown discreetly lustrous, was shown in by the page.

“This, Mr. Wilson, is Mr. Dickin from whom I want to buy a serial. I asked him to name a price, and he said £10,000, which is, of course, preposterous.”

Mr. Wilson inclined his head a little, thus discreetly suggesting that it was preposterous.

“Mr. Dickin,” continued Lord Ottercove, “is not acquainted with the prices of serials paid by newspapers. Obviously so, to judge by the figure he named. What do you think we ought to pay him?”

“Well—” said Mr. Wilson. The situation was one warranting discretion. “The prices vary.” It was not wise to say more.

Lord Ottercove looked sad and troubled at having to be so.

“According to the serial and the author,” Mr. Wilson added.

“I suppose,” Lord Ottercove said doubtfully, “you are a fairly good author?”

“I suppose so,” Frank said gloomily.

“Has Vernon Sprott read any of your novels?” Vernon Sprott was the foreman of British fiction, proud of purse and dexterous with the pen.

“I don’t know.”

“We’ll ask him.—Give me Vernon Sprott—Vernon, old boy, how are you?” Frank had a feeling that he was at the centre of all things, in the very signal box from which all the wires were pulled and the signals flashed the wide world over. “Vernon, I say, have you read any of Frank Dickin’s novels? You have? Well, what do you think of them? What? They’re all right? Vernon, good evening to you!” He put down the receiver. “He says they’re all right.”

“That’s good.”

“Well—” said Lord Ottercove, still far from making history. But the next moment, as a cat is reputed nearly always to fall on its feet, he slipped into history. “Are you,” he said, “at all ready to leave it all to me?”

“To no one more!” Dickin said passionately, feeling that he was now treading a pivot on which fortunes turn, and henceforward fly round, multiplying incessantly.

“I’ll tell you what I will do for you. I’ll let you draw on my account.”

“On your account?”

“Yuh!”

“To—to what extent?”

“Without limit.”

“But how do you mean?”

“As much as you need.”

Frank, flushed, his scalp tingling, punctuated the air with words of embarrassed and bewildered gratitude. “ ... incredible ... incomprehensible....”

Lord Ottercove, as in an alternating duet, kept up with: “Not a bit.... I like doing it....”

“I cannot believe it....”

“My dear fellow, it’s a pleasure to me....”

“I’m staggered....”

“It shall be done!...”

“Speechless.... It’s a dream....”

“Which is your bank?”

“Barclays.”

He took up the receiver. “I want Mrs. Hannibal.”

Mrs. Hannibal was Lord Ottercove’s Secretary-in-Chief. This was, as she entered, already apparent from her general demeanour, from her outward calm and ease and the smiles and little graces she was able to bestow on visitors: that somewhat frozen smile of a lion trainer who, while smiling thus his careless smile at the fascinated audience, is yet, you notice by a certain pink light in the corner of his eye, not unaware of the gravity of the task in hand, of the fearful perils of the open cage with the unaccountable big lion.

“Mrs. Hannibal, will you arrange for Mr. Dickin to draw on my account at Barclays Bank to an unlimited extent, till further notice.”

Mrs. Hannibal had trained herself never to look astonished. “Yes,” she said, making a shorthand note of it in her book, and vanished with ease to complete it in practice. At that moment another visitor—a strange man in large ungainly boots—was ushered into the vast gay room.

“Hullo, Chris!” Lord Ottercove exclaimed.

“How are you, Rex?”

“Oh—bored to hell. Mr. Dickin has just been reading me his serial.” And without any further introduction, he rose and took the visitor across to the large blue sofa at the far end of the room, and both men sat down and engaged in a silent conversation in which the movements of their lips alone were perceptible (as so often happens on the stage). After a while they rose and sauntered towards Frank.

“Have you, Mr. Dickin, ever heard of a man who can grow two blades of grass for every one? You haven’t? Well, Lord de Jones is the man to do it, and, moreover, I am the man to get him to do it.—You know Mr. Dickin, Chris?”

“No,” said Lord de Jones, holding out a bony hand. “How do you do?”

“But he knows you, Chris. He’s put you into his blooming book!”

Lord de Jones smiled, revealing a row of shark-like teeth. There was something, Frank felt, uncanny and incalculable about him. Lord de Jones could be most suitably described as “a strange man.”

“Lord de Jones,” explained the host, “is a religious scientist. He belongs to the Adventist sect. His argument, if you make bold to disagree with him, is that any one unwilling to be converted to his faith is prevented from doing so by the Devil.”

“I believe,” said Lord de Jones earnestly, “that the world is approaching its prophesied end—”

“Creaking under the burden of his abominations,” laughed his wife’s uncle.

“It may be for that reason,” rejoined Lord de Jones, “that I have been chosen as His instrument to bring about an end.”

“It may be. But before you are instrumental in so doing you will be good enough to carry out your plan of increasing the crop-growing capacity and general fecundity of this lazy mother earth by closing all the craters in the world.”

“Oh?” said Dickin. “Is that a fact? I mean is it a fact that the closing of craters would inevitably have that effect?”

“Yuh,” said Lord Ottercove.

“Are you sure it’s good science?”

“It’s good politics, anyway. The only thing to give old Joe a leg up. The Liberal Party has no platform. Never had one since the Great War. But this crop-increasing stunt will appeal to all sections of the community, and will be the saving of the party. It appeals to me on two grounds. It’s sound economics—at least on the face of it; it’s got a Liberal smack about it: ‘International Good Will. Live and Let Live. Bread for the People.’ Why, it will simply swing him back into the saddle!—But you will exercise discretion, won’t you?” he turned to Frank. “I hope you don’t transcribe everything into your books, do you?”

“Everything,” said Frank.

For a while the three of them sat silent round the octangular table. Lord Ottercove looked kind and a little fatigued; Lord de Jones silent and pensive. Frank looked at the great newspaper proprietor, who was obviously tired but still genial and kind, and his heart swelled with gratitude and a love for Ottercove and the world that he graced and illumined. “I think,” he said, “I am really taking up too much of your time.”

“Not at all. Do stay. And will you dine with me on Friday night at half past eight at my house?”

The intimate warmth of the great room, the political confidences exchanged in his presence, all this filled Frank Dickin with a sense of loyal elation. At last he rose.

“I hope to see you several times before Friday,” said Lord Ottercove, rising and proffering a strong, sensitive hand. “Don’t forget to give your address to my secretary, and come and see me any time you like. Good-bye to you. And mind the step.”

On the landing, Mrs. Hannibal caught him and gave him a special cheque book. “This will be all right,” she said. “I have advised them.”

In the glass in the lift he saw red patches on his cheeks. He thought that unless he steadied his thoughts he might have a stroke. His heart ebbed and swelled and he walked unsteadily on his feet past the braided commissionaire into the lighted street.

VIII.

EVA

Eva did not reproach him for his inordinately long absence. And the taxi-driver, whatever he may have looked like before, now looked resigned, as if hoping for the best. “I stopped him ticking after a time,” she said, “and I told him you would pay him well. So he looked quite pleased and stopped ticking.”

“I know it was a long time. It must have seemed a terribly long time.”

“Oh, it seemed ages and ages and ages! I thought perhaps you had had a stroke or that Lord Ottercove had strangled you. And then I simply ceased worrying and fell asleep.”

“And the taxi-driver?”

“He fell asleep too. I told him it would be all right.”

“And yet,” said Frank, looking at his watch, “I haven’t been away three hours!”

“And I dreamt that it was a big mystery case, and that they dragged out your body and hanged Lord Ottercove for instigating the affair and—”

“I’ve been reading my book to him.”

“Your book?”

“About you, darling.”

“Oh, darling!”

As the taxi-driver, who had by now outgrown the faculty of astonishment, asked for a clue, they directed him, provisionally, to Piccadilly Circus. Alone, Eva at once pressed herself to his side and brought her mouth to his for kissing, before he was really ready for it; for he had drunk too much champagne and had read aloud so long and now was hiccupping all the time.

“Stop hiccupping,” she said.

For him the day was too rich in new impressions to allow him to savour his happiness. That morning, after a long absence, he had come back from Paris. The Calais boat sidling to the Dover pier. British porters, big, sturdy ruffians, elbowing, like a football team, by the gang-plank; suddenly charging the decks, making away with your boxes and bags. Then the bright shining boat-train gliding away and racing along through the dim countryside, London-ward, without stop. Victoria at last. The vast hideous metropolis blinking through the milky mist. And Eva’s letter in his pocket-book: