by John Buchan
Madame’s plump dark face showed surprise, and possibly annoyance, as she observed the two. Miss Outhwaite hastened to explain the situation with a speed which revealed nervousness. ‘This is a lady from St Jude’s, Madam,’ she said. ‘She comes ‘ere districk-visiting and she knows the folk of Radhurst, where I comes from, so I made bold to ask her in.’
‘I am very glad to meet you, Madame Breda,’ said the district-visitor. ‘I hope you don’t mind my calling on Elsie Outhwaite. I want her to help in our Girls’ Friendly Society work.’
‘You have been here before, I think,’ was the reply in a sufficiently civil tone. ‘I have seen you in the Square sometimes. There is no objection on my part to Outhwaite’s attending your meetings, but I warn you that she has very little free time.’ The woman was a foreigner, no doubt, but on this occasion her English showed little trace of accent.
‘That is very good of you. I should have asked your permission first, but you were unfortunately not at home when I called, and Elsie and I made friends by accident. I hope you will let me come again.’
As the visitor descended the steps and passed through the bright green gate into the gathering dusk of the Square, Madame Breda watched her contemplatively from one of the windows.
The lady came again four days later – it must, I think, have been the 29th of May. Miss Outhwaite, when she opened the door, looked flustered. ‘I can’t talk to you tonight, miss. Madame’s order is that when you next came you was to be shown into her room.’
‘How very kind of her!’ said the lady. ‘I should greatly enjoy a talk with her. And, Elsie I’ve got such a nice present for you – a hat which a friend gave me and which is too young – really too young – for me to wear. I’m going to give it to you, if you’ll accept it. I’ll bring it in a day or two.’
The district-visitor was shown into the large room on the right-hand side of the hall where Madame received her patients. There was no one there except a queer-looking little girl in a linen smock, who beckoned her to follow to the folding-doors which divided the apartment from the other at the back. The lady did a strange thing, for she picked up the little girl, held her a second in her arms, and kissed her – after the emotional habit of the childless dévoté. Then she passed through the folding-doors.
It was an odd apartment in which she found herself – much larger than could have been guessed from the look of the house, and, though the night was warm, there was a fire lit, a smouldering fire which gave off a fine blue smoke. Madame Breda was there, dressed in a low-cut gown as if she had been dining out, and looking handsome and dark and very foreign in the light of the shaded lamps. In an armchair by the hearth sat a wonderful old lady, with a thing like a mantilla over her snow-white hair. It was a room so unlike anything in her narrow experience that the new-comer stood hesitating as the folding-doors shut behind her.
‘Oh, Madame Breda, it is so very kind of you to see me,’ she faltered.
‘I do not know your name,’ Madame said, and then she did a curious thing, for she lifted a lamp and held it in the visitor’s face, scrutinizing every line of her shabby figure.
‘Clarke – Agnes Clarke. I am the eldest of three sisters – the other two are married – you may have heard of my father – he wrote some beautiful hymns, and edited –’
‘How old are you?’ Madame broke in, still holding up the lamp.
The district-visitor gave a small nervous laugh. ‘Oh, I am not so very old – just over forty – well, to be quite truthful, nearly forty-seven. I feel so young sometimes that I cannot believe it, and then – at other times – when I am tired – I feel a hundred. Alas! I have many useless years behind me. But then we all have, don’t you think? The great thing is to be resolved to make the most of every hour that remains to us. Mr Empson at St Jude’s preached such a beautiful sermon last Sunday about that. He said we must give every unforgiving minute its sixty seconds’ worth of distance run – I think he was quoting poetry. It is terrible to think of unforgiving minutes.’
Madame did not appear to be listening. She said something to the older lady in a foreign tongue.
‘May I sit down, please?’ the visitor asked. ‘I have been walking a good deal today.’
Madame waved her away from the chair she seemed about to take. ‘You will sit there, if you please,’ she said, pointing to a low couch beside the old woman.
The visitor was obviously embarrassed. She sat down on the edge of the couch, a faded nervous figure compared to the two masterful personages, and her fingers played uneasily with the handle of her satchel.
‘Why do you come to this house?’ Madame asked, and her tone was almost menacing. ‘We have nothing to do with your church.’
‘Oh, but you live in the parish, and it’s such a large and difficult parish, and we want help from everyone. You cannot imagine how horrible some of the slums are – what bitter poverty in these bad times – and the worn-out mothers and the poor little neglected children. We are trying to make it a brighter place.’
‘Do you want money?’
‘We always want money.’ The district-visitor’s face wore an ingratiating smile. ‘But we want chiefly personal service. Mr Empson always says that one little bit of personal service is better than a large subscription – better for the souls of the giver and the receiver.’
‘What do you expect to get from Outhwaite?’
‘She is a young girl from a country village and alone in London. She is a good girl, I think, and I want to give her friends and innocent amusement. And I want her help too in our work.’
The visitor started, for she found the hand of the old woman on her arm. The long fingers were running down it and pressing it. Hitherto the owner of the hand had not spoken, but now she said:
‘This is the arm of a young woman. She has lied about her age. No woman of forty-seven ever had such an arm.’
The soft passage of the fingers had suddenly become a grip of steel, and the visitor cried out.
‘Oh, please, please, you are hurting me… I do not tell lies. I am proud of my figure – just a little. It is like my mother’s, and she was so pretty. But oh! I am not young. I wish I was. I’m quite old when you see me by daylight.’
The grip had relaxed, and the visitor moved along the couch to be out of its reach. She had begun to cry in a helpless silly way, as if she were frightened. The two other women spoke to each other in a strange tongue, and then Madame said:
‘I will not have you come here. I will not have you meddle with my servants. I do not care a fig for your church. If you come here again you will repent it.’
Her tone was harsh, and the visitor looked as if her tears would begin again. Her discomposure had deprived her of the faded grace which had been in her air before, and she was now a pathetic and flimsy creature, like some elderly governess pleading against dismissal.
‘You are cruel,’ she sighed. ‘I am so sorry if I have done anything wrong, but I meant it for the best. I thought that you might help me, for Elsie said you were clever and kind. Won’t you think of poor Elsie? She is so young and far from her people. Mayn’t she come to St Jude’s sometimes?’
‘Outhwaite has her duties at home, and so I dare say have you, if truth was spoken. Bah! I have no patience with restless English old maids. They say an Englishman’s house is his castle, and yet there is a plague of barren virgins always buzzing round it in the name of religion and philanthropy. Listen to me. I will not have you in this house. I will not have you talking to Outhwaite. I will not have an idle woman spying on my private affairs.’
The visitor dabbed her eyes with a wisp of handkerchief. The old woman had stretched out her hand again and would have laid it on her breast, but she had started up violently. She seemed to be in a mood between distress and fear. She swallowed hard before her voice came, and then it quavered.
‘I think I had better go. You have wounded me very deeply. I know I’m not clever, but I try so hard… and… and – it pains me to be misunderstood
. I am afraid I have been tactless, so please forgive me… I won’t come again… I’ll pray that your hearts may some day be softened.’
She seemed to make an effort to regain composure, and with a final dab at her eyes smiled shakily at the unrelenting Madame, who had touched an electric bell. She closed the folding-doors gently behind her, like a repentant child who has been sent to bed. The front room was in darkness, but there was a light in the hall where Miss Outhwaite waited to show her out.
At the front door the district-visitor had recovered herself.
‘Elsie,’ she whispered, ‘Madame Breda does not want me to come again. But I must give you the hat I promised you. I’ll have it ready by Thursday night. I’m afraid I may be rather late – after eleven perhaps – but don’t go to bed till I come. I’ll go round to the back door. It’s such a smart pretty hat. I know you’ll love it.’
Once in the Square she looked sharply about her, cast a glance back at No. 4, and then walked away briskly. There was a man lounging at the corner to whom she spoke; he nodded and touched his hat, and a big motor car, which had been waiting in the shadows on the other side, drew up at the kerb. It seemed a strange conveyance for the district-visitor, but she entered it as if she were used to it, and when it moved off it was not in the direction of her rooms in Hampstead.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Night of the First of June
The last two days of May were spent by me in the most miserable restlessness and despondency. I was cut off from all communications with my friends and I did not see how I could reopen them. For Medina, after his late furious busyness, seemed to have leisure again, and he simply never let me out of his sight. I dare say I might have managed a visit to the Club and a telephone message to Mary, but I durst not venture it, for I realized as I had never done before how delicate was the ground I walked on and how one false step on my part might blow everything sky-high. It would have mattered less if I had been hopeful of success, but a mood of black pessimism had seized me. I could count on Mary passing on my news to Macgillivray and on Macgillivray’s taking the necessary steps to hasten the rounding-up; by the 2nd of June Mercot would be restored to his friends, and Miss Victor too, if Mary had got on her track again. But who was arranging all that? Was Mary alone in the business, and where was Sandy? Mercot and Gaudian would be arriving in Scotland, and telegraphing to me any moment, and I could not answer them. I had the maddening feeling that everything was on a knife edge, that the chances of a blunder were infinite, and that I could do nothing. To crown all, I was tortured by the thought of David Warcliff. I had come to the conclusion that Mary’s farewell words at Hill Street had meant nothing: indeed, I couldn’t see how she could have found out anything about the little boy, for as yet we had never hit on the faintest clue, and the thought of him made success with the other two seem no better than failure. Likewise I was paying the penalty for the assurance about Medina which I had rashly expressed to Mary. I felt the terror of the man in a new way; he seemed to me impregnable beyond the hope of assault; and while I detested him I also shuddered at him – a novel experience, for hitherto I had always found that hatred drove out fear.
He was abominable during those two days – abominable but also wonderful. He seemed to love the sight of me, as if I were a visible and intimate proof of his power, and he treated me as an Oriental tyrant might treat a favourite slave. He unbent to me as a relief to his long spiritual tension, and let me see the innermost dreams of his heart. I realized with a shudder that he thought me a part of that hideous world he had created, and – I think for the first time in the business – I knew fear on my own account. If he dreamed I could fail him he would become a ravening beast… I remember that he talked a good deal of politics, but, ye gods! what a change from the respectable conservative views which he had once treated me to – a Tory revival owing to the women and that sort of thing! He declared that behind all the world’s creeds, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and the rest, lay an ancient devil-worship and that it was raising its head again. Bolshevism, he said, was a form of it, and he attributed the success of Bolshevism in Asia to a revival of what he called Shamanism – I think that was the word. By his way of it the War had cracked the veneer everywhere and the real stuff was showing through. He rejoiced in the prospect, because the old faiths were not ethical codes but mysteries of the spirit, and they gave a chance for men who had found the ancient magic. I think he wanted to win everything that civilization would give him, and then wreck it, for his hatred of Britain was only a part of his hatred of all that most men hold in love and repute. The common anarchist was a fool to him, for the cities and temples of the whole earth were not sufficient sacrifice to appease his vanity. I knew now what a Goth and a Hun meant, and what had been the temper of scourges like Attila and Timour… Mad, you will say. Yes, mad beyond doubt, but it was the most convincing kind of madness. I had to fight hard, by keeping my mind firm on my job, to prevent my nerve giving.
I went to bed on the last night of May in something very near despair, comforting myself, I remember, by what I had said to Mary, that one must go on to the finish and trust to luck changing in the last ten minutes. I woke to a gorgeous morning, and when I came down to breakfast I was in a shade better spirits. Medina proposed a run out into the country and a walk on some high ground. ‘It will give us an appetite for the Thursday dinner,’ he said. Then he went upstairs to telephone, and I was in the smoking-room filling my pipe when suddenly Greenslade was shown in.
I didn’t listen to what he had to say, but seized a sheet of paper and scribbled a note: ‘Take this to the head porter at the Club and he will give you any telegram there is for me. If there is one from Gaudian, as there must be, wire him to start at once and go straight to Julius Victor. Then wire the Duke to meet him there. Do you understand? Now, what have you to tell me?’
‘Only that your wife says things are going pretty well. You must turn up tonight at ten-thirty at the Fields of Eden. Also somehow you must get a latch-key for this house, and see that the door is not chained.’
‘Nothing more?’
‘Nothing more.’
‘And Peter John?’
Greenslade was enlarging on Peter John’s case when Medina entered. ‘I came round to tell Sir Richard that it was all a false alarm. Only the spring fret. The surgeon was rather cross at being taken so far on a fool’s errand. Lady Hannay thought he had better hear it from me personally, for then he could start on his holiday with an easy mind.’
I was so short with him that Medina must have seen how far my thoughts were from my family. As we motored along the road to Tring I talked of the approaching holiday, like a toadying schoolboy who has been asked to stay for a cricket week with some senior. Medina said he had not fixed the place, but it must be somewhere south in the sun – Algiers, perhaps, and the fringes of the desert, or better still some remote Mediterranean spot where we could have both sunlight and blue sea. He talked of the sun like a fire-worshipper. He wanted to steep his limbs in it, and wash his soul in the light, and swim in wide warm waters. He rhapsodized like a poet, but what struck me about his rhapsodies was how little sensuous they were. The man’s body was the most obedient satellite of his mind, and I don’t believe he had any weakness of the flesh. What he wanted was a bath of radiance for his spirit.
We walked all day on the hills around Ivinghoe, and had a late lunch in the village inn. He spoke very little, but strode over the thymy downs with his eyes abstracted. Once, as we sat on the summit, he seemed to sigh and his face for a moment was very grave.
‘What is the highest pleasure?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Attainment?… No. Renunciation.’
‘So I’ve heard the parsons say,’ I observed.
He did not heed me. ‘To win everything that mankind has ever striven for, and then to cast it aside. To be Emperor of the Earth and then to slip out of the ken of mankind and take up the sandals and begging-bowl. The man who can do that has conquered the world – he is not a king bu
t a god. Only he must be a king first to achieve it.’
I cannot hope to reproduce the atmosphere of that scene, the bare top of the hill in the blue summer weather, and that man, nearing, as he thought, the summit of success, and suddenly questioning all mortal codes of value. In all my dealings with Medina I was obsessed by the sense of my inferiority to him, that I was like a cab horse compared to an Arab stallion, and now I felt it like a blow in the face. That was the kind of thing Napoleon might have said – and done – had his schemes not gone astray. I knew I was contending with a devil, but I know also that it was a great devil.
We returned to town just in time to dress for dinner, and all my nervousness revived a hundredfold. This was the night of crisis, and I loathed having to screw myself up to emergencies late in the day. Such things should take place in the early morning. It was like going over the top in France; I didn’t mind it so much when it happened during a drizzling dawn, when one was anyhow depressed and only half-awake, but I abominated an attack in the cold-blooded daylight, or in the dusk when one wanted to relax.
That evening I shaved, I remember, very carefully, as if I were decking myself out for a sacrifice. I wondered what would be my feelings when I next shaved. I wondered what Mary and Sandy were doing…
What Mary and Sandy were doing at that precise moment I do not know, but I can now unfold certain contemporary happenings which were then hid from me… Mercot and Gaudian were having a late tea in the Midland express, having nearly broken their necks in a furious motor race to catch the train at Hawick. The former was clean and shaven, his hair nicely cut, and his clothes a fairly well-fitting ready-made suit of flannels. He was deeply sunburnt, immensely excited, and constantly breaking in on Gaudian’s study of the works of Sir Walter Scott.
‘Newhover is to be let loose today. What do you suppose he’ll do?’ he asked.
‘Nothing – yet awhile,’ was the answer. ‘I said certain things to him. He cannot openly go back to Germany, and I do not think he dare come to England. He fears the vengeance of his employer. He will disappear for a little, and then emerge in some new crime with a new name and a changed face. He is the eternal scoundrel.’
