"You are worried, yes," murmured Marcia. She sat down on the settee and motioned Rainborough to sit beside her. He sank down.
"Perhaps I could help you," said Marcia. "But first you must tell me everything."
To Rainborough"s astonishment that was exactly what he proceeded to do. The whole story of Miss Cas.e.m.e.nt came out. It sounded grotesque; but it gave him an extraordinary relief to tell it as a story. To place Miss Cas.e.m.e.nt in the framework of "And then she ..." set a blessed distance between them.
Marcia listened with a gentle slightly clinical air, nodding her head. "Que tu es drole, mon cher!" she said at the end. "But you do not love this woman at all, I think?"
"No," said Rainborough. "Yes, I don"t know. She fascinates me." He saw Marcia"s hand lying beside him on the cushions. It resembled Annette"s hand. Rainborough"s head reeled. He stood up. "I"m in a muddle!" he said.
"You want to escape, I think?" said Marcia.
"Yes, exactly," said Rainborough, "escape, yes, yes! But how?"
"You do not love her," said Marcia firmly. "This first must be clear, not only to think but to feel. Ask yourself what is the thing about her that is most unpleasant that you remember?"
Rainborough reflected. For a moment he could think of nothing graver than the fact that she had been so bad tempered when they had missed their dinner at Henley because he had been so long in making his proposal. Then he thought of her behaviour to the little typist.
"Now tell this to me in detail," said Marcia.
Rainborough did so. He felt that he was being guilty of the basest treachery. It was a delicious feeling.
"Now you must go away," said Marcia, "at once."
Rainborough stood before her helpless and incoherent. Fierce hatred for Miss Cas.e.m.e.nt possessed him, while Marcia swam before his eyes, strangely disintegrated into hair and hands and lips. "How can I," he said, "at this hour, and where to?"
"You will go to our villa near Saint Tropez," said Marcia. "There in the south it is already summer-time. Here is the address. I will send a wire to the servant, and to some friends of ours who live near. You have no business here to keep you?"
"None!" said Rainborough.
"Why do you wait then?" said Marcia. "Relax, mon cher ami!"
"I haven"t got a ticket or any French money," said Rainborough frantically.
"I will give you money," said Marcia, "and we will book you a ticket by telephone. For what do you keep a telephone?" In a moment she was talking to the airfield.
Rainborough walked or staggered once round the room. He felt pain and exultation. Irrevocable things were happening. "I can"t go without telling her," he said.
"Tell her then!" said Marcia, "or shall I? You leave it to me, yes? What is her telephone number?"
Rainborough uttered the number.
"And excuse me," said Marcia, "what is your Christian name? This is necessary too."
"John," said Rainborough, "John, John, John!" He repeated it pa.s.sionately as if he were casting down his personality at her feet.
Marcia was speaking again on the telephone. Very far away, already in some other world, Rainborough could hear the voice of Miss Cas.e.m.e.nt.
"John asked me to tell you that he is going away ..." Marcia was saying. Her foreign tones were like green honey.
Rainborough sat down. He wiped his brow. For a moment the pain in his heart seemed a little like pity. Then a great wind was blowing through him. It blew right through him without any hindrance. He was empty. He left the room to pack his suit-case.
"Your plane leaves in an hour"s time," said Marcia"s voice. "I will take you to the airfield. Do not forget your pa.s.sport."
A few moments later Rainborough was going out of the front door with Marcia. He slammed the door to behind him. He got into the Mercedes.
Twenty-Five.
IT was a few days later that a question was asked in parliament by an obscure Conservative M.P. concerning the status of certain European workers who held permits for an indefinite stay in Great Britain. The M.P. wished to ask the Home Secretary whether he was aware that a number of individuals who had been trained for work in this country under the so-called SELIB scheme were strictly ineligible under the terms of the agreement. This question followed, as it happened, upon a charge, which was being levelled against the government of the day, of irresponsible management of monies donated by American organizations. This country, it was argued by an Opposition group, was forgetting upon which side its bread was b.u.t.tered. The phrase "after all, we Europeans - " uttered by a Socialist speaker in the ensuing debate was greeted by cries of "Look here!" and "Don"t exaggerate!" The whole matter received considerable publicity. The obscure M.P., having performed his task, sank again into the tranquillity of the back benches. It was generally agreed that someone must have "put him up to it", but no one could make out who had done it or why, although one or two well-known names were mentioned.
For a day or two the evening papers put the discussion into the headlines, home office to screen SELIB workers. Deport Illegal Migrants says M.P. On the second of these two days Rosa returned to Campden Hill Square to find that Stefan Lusiewicz had disappeared. He had vanished as completely as if he had never been there. He left no trace in the house. Rosa noticed his departure with a dull satisfaction. Since her visit to Mischa Fox she had scarcely noticed his existence. It was as if, as soon as she had seen Mischa, Stefan had already been blotted out of her life. Other problems now engrossed Rosa. It was as if the years had rolled away and she was once again involved in the old coil: what was Mischa up to, what did Mischa really think, what did Mischa expect of her, what was she to do about Mischa? What had chiefly stunned her on the occasion of her visit to him was his determination to talk about Peter Saward, and even to speak of Peter"s attachment to Rosa.
Rosa had, she imagined, been prepared for anything when she went to see Mischa. She had been ready to be snubbed and humiliated. She had also been ready for an affectionate welcome, to be followed by some sort of renewal of his suit. Rosa had not made clear to herself whether she wanted this or not. In any case it had not happened. It had seemed rather as if Mischa were pressing the suit of Peter Saward, although nothing had been said which could unambiguously be read in this way. What does he want? Rosa wondered. Does he want to keep Peter and me together in a cage? She was, it occurred to her, singularly without information about the relations of Mischa and Peter. Or was this move designed perhaps rather to divide her from Peter and make her feel disgust and impatience about him: possibly to arouse in her the sense that it was certainly not with Peter that she would ever link her fate, and so to enlighten her about her true feelings?
But what were her true feelings? The only thing which Rosa did feel as a result of Mischa"s tender concern about him was an extreme irritation with Peter Saward. She knew this to be irrational and unfair - but its inevitability inclined her to think that this was perhaps just what Mischa wanted. She then did her level best to feel the opposite. Later on she told herself that she was attaching an undue importance to the whole thing and that Mischa had not meant anything in particular; but this view she in turn rejected on the general a priori principle that Mischa never failed to mean something in particular. He is cutting my links with other people, she thought suddenly, he is blocking my routes of escape. She now no longer troubled to regret her action in seeking Mischa"s help. It made no difference. Whether she ran towards him or away it was all the same.
As Rosa revolved these thoughts in her mind she was sitting beside Hunter"s bed. He lay there before her as helpless as in childhood. Hunter was ill with a mysterious illness. He had a high fever and intermittent delirium. He lay at present in a comatose slumber. The doctor had confessed himself puzzled, had declared the boy to be in no immediate danger, and had said that there was nothing to be done but to keep him quiet and see what happened. Rosa had her own theories about the cause of Hunter"s sickness, but as these were too fantastic to reveal to the doctor she kept them to herself.
When the scandal about SELIB had broken as a result of the question in Parliament, Hunter had been amazed. How very odd that it should have happened now, he kept saying to himself. But his triumph at the discomfiture of Lusiewicz and his subsequent departure was clouded by the thought that the Pole would certainly regard him as responsible for this timely development. Hunter feared for his life; for he very heartily believed the threats which Stefan had uttered on the occasion of the striking of the matches. He began to have vivid nightmares in which he would hear the Pole creeping down from his room above and fumbling at Hunter"s door. These were varied with hardly less unpleasant dreams in which Calvin Blick was to be seen displaying innumerable pictures of Rosa dressed in black stockings. From these nocturnal entertainments Hunter would be awakened by the pain of his burnt forehead, which seemed to be refusing to heal. A feeling as if all the skin of his face were being drawn towards a hole in his brow persisted all day and as much of the night as was spared from the sequence of nightmares. In despair Hunter had cut off his yellow hair as far back as the crown of his head, and now he did not dare to venture out into the streets. He became a sick man.
He was now wakening slowly from sleep. The room seemed to be full of light and darkness which was scattered about it in intense patches. The light was dazzling, and the darkness was oppressive, as if the room were full of dark objects. One of these objects seemed to be lodged on Hunter"s chest. After a while it occurred to him that the light was so dazzling because it was daylight and not electric light. He began to puzzle about what time it was. The darkness now seemed to be gathering together into one part of the room and had something of the appearance of an enormous black spider which was crouching in the corner. One of its legs touched Hunter"s bed and made him shudder continually. Somewhere in the lighted portion of the room he could see his mother sitting. Her head was thrown back and she was looking away from him out of the window. Her black hair was tumbling down her neck in the way in which he had so often seen it. She was frowning. And now someone else was in the room too and voices were beginning to fly about above his head. They were booming inaudibly like a loudspeaker system that has gone wrong. Now they were loud, now they were soft. Hunter lay quite still and listened.
Rosa was surprised to see Mrs Wingfield coming into the room. She jumped to her feet.
"It"s a fine thing," said Mrs Wingfield, "when I have to come and look for you!" She was wearing her corduroy trousers under a tweed cape, and an old-fashioned pair of hornrimmed spectacles.
"I"m so sorry," said Rosa, "the last two or three days - "
"Don"t apologize!" said Mrs Wingfield. "Foy ran me across in the car. She"s waiting outside now."
"Oh, let me ask her in - " said Rosa.
"On no account!" said Mrs Wingfield. "If she likes to play the faithful retainer, let her, I say. You wouldn"t believe, incidentally, what a speed fiend that woman is. She almost touched fifty coming across the square. What"s the matter with the boy?"
"We don"t know," said Rosa. "Oh, my dear, h.e.l.lo!" This latter exclamation was directed to Marcia, who had just put her head round the door.
"May I come in?" said Marcia. "How is poor Hunter?"
"Much the same, I"m afraid," said Rosa. "Mrs Wingfield, may I introduce Lady c.o.c.keyne?"
"Ah, you have seen the newspapers!" said Marcia.
"Indeed I have," said Rosa, "and may I congratulate you? Marcia"s husband has just been honoured," she said to Mrs Wingfield.
"If you call that an honour," said Mrs Wingfield," your poor mother must be spinning in her grave like a teetotum!"
"Is Hunter asleep?" asked Marcia, "Yes," said Rosa," he"s very comatose. Nothing rouses him."
"It is strange, is it not?" said Marcia. "It is as if someone had cast a bad spell on him. Do you believe in love potions and in spells which bring to people illness and death?" she asked Mrs Wingfield politely.
"No, of course not! snapped Mrs Wingfield, "but I believe in the unconscious mind, and that"s quite enough moonshine. The boy must have been brooding on something. He probably suffers from guilt feelings. Has he committed any crimes lately?"
"No," said Rosa, "he hasn"t committed any crimes."
"I don"t know what you mean by that," said Mrs Wingfield, "and am in too much of a hurry to ask. I came over to tell you that I don"t want your brother to have anything further to do with the Artemis."
"Are you the person who decides?" asked Rosa.
"Your tone is sarcastic," said Mrs Wingfield, "but let me wipe that look off your face by telling you that in fact I am the person who decides. I own the Artemis now. The largest shareholder was Mrs Carrington-Morris and I bought her out three days ago. She may have conscientious objections to alcohol, but she had none to taking the suitably large sum of money which I offered. I"ve also bought out all the other shareholders except you. No, don"t look hopeful, I don"t mean to offer you anything for your shares. So now the paper is mine, and I propose to dispense with the boy." Mrs Wingfield peered down at Hunter with an expression of interested disgust as if he were a dead mouse which the cat had brought in.
Hunter turned on the bed. The voices still bloomed and buzzed somewhere above him. Far away someone was uttering his name. A strange perfume floated on the air like the scent of forests where he had been as a child. He heaved his chest up and drank it in through mouth and nostrils. In the lighted portion of the room, rather still and far away as in a picture, he could see a beautiful lady. She looked familiar, and yet she was not anybody that he knew.
"A film star," said Hunter aloud; "must be a film star." Film stars always looked like someone one knew. She was wearing a leopard-skin coat and she bent towards him with such a sweet look of concern. But as she moved, the spider moved nearer too and its many-faceted eye was suddenly close above him. In its gla.s.sy surface he could see himself reflected once, twice, a hundred times. He turned away in horror and buried his head in the pillow.
"He is awakening!" said Marcia. "He said something. What was it?"
"What do you want me to do with the Artemis?" said Rosa. She felt very tired.
"You make me sick!" said Mrs Wingfield shrilly. "Why don"t you put up a fight? I"d give the whole thing to you tomorrow if you had any blood! As for your brother, he"s obviously dying of anaemia!"
"Don"t shout, Mrs Wingfield," said Rosa, "you"re disturbing him."
"And let me tell you," cried Mrs Wingfield rising to her feet, "I"d have left you all my money too if I"d thought that you had any blood in you! You"ve missed a quarter of a million, my dear Miss Keepe, just reflect on that! No blood, Miss Keepe, that"s the trouble with you, no blood!"
Mrs Wingfield had left the room and was going noisily down the stairs.
"Tiens!" said Marcia.
Rosa shrugged her shoulders.
"Has there not been too much noise," said Marcia, "beside what may indeed be a bed of great sickness?"
"Hunter"s all right!" said Rosa, and she prodded the side of the bed irritably with her knee. Hunter murmured something inaudible.
"I came to say good-bye," said Marcia. "We go on Friday to Dalmatia for our holiday." She was looking radiant.
"I am so glad," said Rosa.
As Hunter watched, the spider was getting bigger and bigger. Now only a small patch of light was left within which he could see his mother"s face. At last this too was disappearing.
"How is Annette?" said Rosa.
"So well, my dear," said Marcia. "So well, so young. Do not worry at all about Annette." She touched Rosa"s arm. "Do not worry about anything."
"I am so glad," said Rosa. "I am so glad. I am so glad."
Twenty-Six.
NINA the dressmaker was packing her suit-case. She packed only a few clothes and the things which she called her original room, the things which had travelled with her everywhere. They were not many. Some photographs, an embroidered cloth, a Bible which had belonged to her mother, and three wooden horses which a peasant had carved near the place where she was born. As she packed, her tears fell steadily over her hands and into the suit-case. She no longer troubled to wipe them away. She turned round through a haze and stumbled about in the forest of unfinished dresses. From a distant drawer she brought a warm jersey and put it into her suit-case. She would need that where she was going. But where was she going?
Three days ago Nina had received a communication from the Home Office asking her to present herself at a certain department in Westminster, and adding that failure to do so would render her liable to prosecution. For Nina too had been born east of the line. She had not obeyed the summons. Now in a fever of haste she was packing to be gone, at every moment expecting to hear upon the stairs the tread of the police who would come to take her away. She had read everything that the newspapers had to tell her about her situation; and she had no doubt that if she fell now into the hands of the State she would be deported at once back to her own country. And I would rather die, thought Nina, I would rather die.
She had finished packing her case. Everything was ready. She looked into her handbag. She had in it a very large sum of money and her pa.s.sport. She stared at her pa.s.sport, and it seemed to her suddenly like a death warrant. It filled her with shame and horror. She took it in her hand and it fell open at the picture of herself. It was an old picture taken in the worst days of her fear. At the Nina whose hair was golden a younger black-haired Nina stared back, anxious, haggard and fearful. Here was her very soul upon record, stamped and filed; a soul without a nationality, a soul without a home. She turned the faded pages. The earlier ones carried the names of the frontiers of her childhood, frontiers which no longer existed in the world. The later pages were covered with the continually renewed permits from the Ministry of Labour. The Foreign Office which had issued this doc.u.ment had disappeared from the face of the earth. Now nothing could make it new. It remained like the Book of Judgement, the record of her sins, the final and irrevocable sentence of society upon her. She was without ident.i.ty in a world where to be without ident.i.ty is the first and most universal of crimes, the crime which, whatever else it may overlook, every State punishes. She had no official existence.
Nina put on her coat. She must lose no more time. She had already wasted two days in distress and indecision. She had made an attempt to see Rosa, but Rosa had told her shortly that her brother was very ill and would Nina come back another time. Another time will be too late, Nina said to herself with the slowness of grief, there is no more time. She had walked home, dragging her feet at a slow pace. Then at last it had come to her that she must run away. After that, she had acted with desperate haste. She had had to wait until the banks opened and she could draw out all her money. Then she had packed up her things and now she was ready to go. But where she was to go to she had not clearly conceived. In the first moments of her decision to fly she had decided to go to Eire. She was not sure whether a pa.s.sport was needed to get into Eire. She was not sure, and there was n.o.body, n.o.body, whom she could ask.
She stood there with her coat on and her suit-case packed, and looked about the room which she had already abandoned. Then suddenly it seemed to her impossible that she should be allowed to leave the country. Every port would be watched. She pictured once again the sort of scene in which she had so often taken part, the scene at the frontier where she watched and waited while uniformed men examined her papers; the long time of waiting until the man who had taken her pa.s.sport away should return with a surly look, as if she had wasted his time, to tell her that her papers were not in order and she could not pa.s.s. I couldn"t stand it again, said Nina to herself, not again. She sat down on a chair.
A loud sob escaped from her like a live thing bursting from her breast. It now seemed to her quite useless to try to fly. She would only be arrested as she was about to board the boat. There was no escape. The men in uniform had only let her run ahead of them for a little way. Now once more they were close behind. They had not really let her go, they would never let her go. It was useless to fly and impossible to stay. Only one frontier remained, the frontier where no papers are asked for, which can be crossed without an ident.i.ty into the land which remains, for the persecuted, always open.
She got up and started to walk up and down the room. She began to pull her coat off. Tears seemed to come now from her eyes and nose and mouth as if her whole being were dissolved into water. Her coat fell to the floor and she trampled across it. Then she began to pull out from its hiding-place in the bale of cloth the map of Australia which she had cherished there for so long. She opened it and laid it flat and looked at it for a while. Then she left it where it was and continued to walk about, treading upon it and striking the walls with her hands. Her tears began to abate. She could not remember that she had ever cried so much.
As the crying ceased, it was replaced by a low and regular wailing sound which came from her lips, without her will, in a rhythmical cadence. It rose and fell like a song. She had heard lamentation like this in her childhood, but she had never understood it. Now she knew how it was possible to sing in the presence of death. People whom she had known long ago came to her now, not clearly seen but present in mult.i.tude, in a great community. She held out her hands to them across the recent past. She stumbled across the room and opened the window very wide. Hazy with sunshine and budding trees the afternoon was revealed. She mounted on a chair.
As she sat upon the window-sill, she swayed to and fro with the continuous rhythm of her song. The sound became higher-pitched and the rhythm faster. The noise seemed now not to pa.s.s her lips but to issue out of her head. As she rocked and swayed, like one beguiling a child or a physical pain, she looked back across the room above the colonnade of dresses murmuring now in the warm breeze from the window. She saw the crucifix upon the wall. I forgot it, thought Nina. How foolish. But now it doesn"t matter. She looked at it, and as she looked she saw it for the first time in her life as a man hanging most painfully from his hands. How strange, she thought that I never saw it in this way before. How he would have suffered, she thought, if he had been mortal. But all that time he knew of paradise, he spoke about it to the penitent thief. It was not the senseless blackness of death, the senseless blackness as it was for her. Then her thoughts coiled back: if not so for him, then not so for her. If for her, then for him too. A dark confusion rose to cover her. For an instant she felt the terrible weight of a G.o.d depending upon her will. It was too heavy. Her song came to an end. She gathered her feet under her and pitched head first from the window.
Twenty-Seven.
THE train was running along with its wheels in the sea. Or so it seemed to Rosa, as she sat at the window, wishing that she could feel the cool water rising about her knees. After black tunnels, between dark pillars, there could be seen at intervals the Mediterranean, intensely blue and scattered with dazzling points of light. It was late afternoon and intolerably hot. Rosa was extremely tired, burdened with the long journey and the weight of her decision. The smell of the train and the heat of the afternoon enclosed her like a winding-sheet. It required an effort to move her limbs. She glanced down at her watch. Still half an hour to go. The train roared into another tunnel. Rosa closed her eyes. If there were any exhilaration in being in h.e.l.l it would be of this kind.
It was immediately after Mrs Wingfield"s visit that Rosa had suddenly decided that she must act. Reflection and counter-reflection about Mischa Fox had brought her to a point of disequilibrium where rest was no longer possible. She had now no doubt but that Mischa"s curious behaviour at their last meeting was designed to produce exactly this frenzied state of mind. But the diagnosis did not cure the condition. She had left the house meaning to call on Peter Saward. But the way to his house seemed to be lined with telephone boxes. Rosa had never in her life noticed so many telephone boxes. They stretched before her like monoliths that mark the way to a temple; and in each one of them a picture of Mischa Fox was hanging up. Rosa looked in at the black telephones as she pa.s.sed. In each one of them the voice of Mischa Fox was lying asleep. When she came to the last one before Peter Saward"s house she entered it and dialled Mischa"s number.
Ringing up Mischa was always a discouraging experience. Half a dozen different voices might be heard at the other end of the line before at last there was the voice of Mischa; and it was impossible not to believe that all the nameless speakers were not still somewhere upon the line, listening to every word, and that this was exactly what Mischa desired. Nor was it ever possible to identify these voices with real people in Mischa"s entourage. They were anonymous voices by whom the caller was interrogated, stripped, and often finally rejected. On this occasion it was without much hope of really establishing contact with him that Rosa lifted the receiver. It was simply that she needed to do something, to perform some action in the real world, and to charm herself for a moment out of the world of thoughts and ghosts. She lifted the telephone as one might light a candle in a church, without belief, and yet obeying a need for ritual.
A woman"s voice replied and asked her to hold on. Then a man spoke, asking her name and her business. Rosa gave her name and asked for Mischa. There was a long silence. Then she heard the voice of Calvin Blick Calvin was friendly, apologetic. Unfortunately Mischa had left London and would be for some time resting at his villa in Italy. Did Rosa know the address? Here it was in any case, perhaps she would like to note it down. Mischa would be very sorry that he had missed her in London, very sorry indeed. Had she got a pencil to write down the address? Good, good. In the middle of this Rosa rang off. That was settled then.
She went on as far as Petet Saward"s door. Then it occurred to her that it was not settled at all. She stood quite still for five minutes outside Peter"s door. Then she turned about and ran back the way she had come. The need for action, so far from being satisfied by mere ritual, was grown within her into an obsessive fury. She called on Miss Foy and asked her to be so good as to look after Hunter. Then she took a taxi to Victoria.
Rosa reflected, as the train was leaving Naples, that perhaps she ought not to have left Hunter alone. But then she told herself again that in fact she was now doing the thing which would be of most help to Hunter; and more deeply still she told herself that what drove her now, half blindly, onward was not only her own will but Hunter"s. About what was to come she reflected not at all. She had never visited Mischa"s Italian villa, nor had she ever met anyone who had, though she had heard various fables about it. She knew its address, which for some reason had always been engraved on her mind, without needing to have it recalled to her by Calvin. And it now seemed to her that she had always known that it was a place to which she would go.
The rhythm of the train altered, and as it became slower the beating of Rosa"s heart became faster. She had not told Mischa that she was coming. How she would reach the villa, and what she would find there when she arrived, she had not even dared to imagine. Perhaps, she thought, she would simply take another train back. Perhaps she would do that. She could, even now, do anything that she wished. Nothing irrevocable had happened yet. She picked up her suit-case and went into the corridor. The train was now running along in the open. On the inland side hills were to be seen, spotted with olive trees, with sad cracks running down their woody sides like the tracks of tears. Behind them were mountains, brown and purple in the late afternoon light, and very softly contoured as if a great quilt had been thrown over more jagged shapes that lay beneath. The train began to stop.