The Third Hour

by Geoffrey Household

  “Nice of you not to laugh,” said Toby, seeing her face set into a mask of solid German politeness. “But don’t strain yourself!”

  Irma burst into peals of laughter.

  “Oh, my dear! Where did you get that ridiculous hat?”

  “In Durango,” Toby answered. “It serves three worthy purposes. It amuses you. It keeps off the sun. And it makes me look like a Mexican at a distance. I like the party car. How does it stand up to rough roads?”

  “It’s unbreakable, I think.”

  “Well, we’ll try.”

  Toby remounted and led the way down the shallow water-course, stopping at intervals to fill the worst of the holes with brushwood and pebbles. It took them an hour to cover the two miles, but they arrived at the hollow without serious damage to springs or paint. Once in the shelter of the bushes, car, horses and camp were completely hidden from any lonely and curious rider across the plain.

  Irma at once took over the duties of groom, and under her care the horses fed and quietened like human workers who had exchanged a kindly but uncertain master for one knowing her own mind. That done, she rested gratefully with a glass of sherry while Toby produced a very creditable stew of mutton and onions, and then built up the fire to give them light by which to eat it.

  She dined heartily and curled herself into a pile of blankets. The hollow, warmed by the fire, screened by the mesquite and smoke trees, seemed the fixed point upon the surface of a lonely earth around which the dome of stars revolved.

  “This is what we were meant for, Toby,” she murmured.

  “Perhaps. And if so, what a tragedy!”

  “What is?”

  “That so few of us ever get it.”

  “Yes. We must never forget that, especially we Germans.” Irma’s low voice throbbed with emotion. “There are too many of us who have lived a youth like mine. Shut in a town helplessly. Knowing the misery behind every house wall. Without money and finding the stuff worthless when we got it. And all the time watching the Jews and the foreigners rolling in wealth and seeing one’s friends sink to any dirty trick to imitate them. We want to give men and women something more lordly to live for. We want to set them free from this foul Jewish civilisation.”

  Toby lit his pipe with a glowing stick, then spoke from the darkness:—

  “I understand that. I too suffered—through you and others. I had to watch the collapse and there wasn’t much I could do to help. But, my dear, the Jews can’t be held responsible for commercial civilisation.”

  “Yes! They stand for all that is worst in it!” Irma sat up, and her eyes, flat and savage, reflected the fire. “The destruction of the great Christian nations of Europe, that is what they want! The end of all manliness!”

  “They do—if you mean loud-mouthed burly brutes in comic uniforms!”

  “Such as the Crusaders, for example?” Irma asked ironically.

  “Yes, such as the Crusaders!” Toby snapped. “Think how they contrast with Saladin—gentleman, soldier, ruler, caring nothing for the colour and race and religion of his subjects, and teaching your precious Crusaders that chivalry and honour really existed. That was a king of men, by God! And we’re short of them in these days of two-a-penny politicians and Hitlers and Stalins.”

  Irma quietly rose to her feet.

  “Toby, will you let me leave you?”

  “Of course. I quite understand. Take a horse and I’ll follow with the car in the morning.”

  “I mean it!”

  “I assumed you did.”

  She hesitated.

  “It means a lot to me—please don’t talk politics.”

  “I don’t want to. My position is this, Irma. You’d better get it clear. I’m the man in the street. To me communists, Nazis and democratic politicians are equally a nuisance. I know it’s wrong, and offensive to everybody, to lump them all together, but I do. I want the world of 1913, when no Europeans, except a few cranks, gave a damn how they were governed so long as the pay came in on a Saturday and they were reasonably free to drink and read what they wanted, make love when they felt like it, and travel where they pleased. If you promise not to talk politics, you won’t hear any from me.”

  “I promise then,” said Irma, with a curt laugh. “Shake hands on it.”

  Toby took her hand. It was ice-cold. He realised how furious she had been under her self-control, and remembered how she had trembled at their first meeting in Vienna—a queer, sensitive body that even when she was most positive and self-possessed betrayed the conflict of deep emotions. He felt very guilty. After all, he held no more brief for the Jews than for any other people. It was just the arrant nonsense talked about them which made him see red.

  He deepened the hollow in the sand where she had lain and lined it with blankets.

  “Try that! And forgive me for hurting you, my dear.”

  Irma flung herself down and stretched her long limbs luxuriously.

  “Now rest well. We shall have a hard day to-morrow. And I’ll need you, you know.”

  “You were ready enough to let me go,” she answered half resentfully.

  “Naturally. You’re a grown-up, most beautiful, with the right to do as you like. Are you warm enough?”

  “Yes. Thank you, dear.”

  “Good-night, then.”

  “Good-night, my old Toby.”

  Toby turned in on the other side of the fire. His desire for Irma was definite and detailed, but he was sufficiently philosophic in matters of sex not to attempt a losing battle nor to allow himself to be overexcited by the unattainable. He slept soundly, and awoke at dawn to find his companion busying herself with the horses. He noticed that she was the only woman he knew who did not appear all knees and bottom in riding breeches, and showed his admiration by successfully grilling half a partridge for her which he had meant, all cowardly, to throw into a soup.

  They left the car nearly empty, loading the four horses with all their water and most of their stores. Two hours’ march to the east took them to the railway; following it towards Torreón they came a little before midday to a fantastic grove of prickly pear growing in and over a tangle of metal, so rusted that it was hardly distinguishable from the distorted brown stems of the cactus.

  “It looks as if there had been a railway accident,” said Irma.

  “It does,” Toby admitted.

  He thought it wiser to say no more, though he wanted to let her know, as was her right, the full story of Lara and the gold. It was not difficult to keep from talk. The white heat, smiting through the thin air of the plateau as fiercely as through space, compelled them to silence. Dustily and thirstily they plodded on at the side of the horses, by common and unspoken consent reserving their energies for the march and exchanging no more than an occasional smile of comradeship.

  Another half hour brought them to the culvert. They halted in its shade for food and water, and after an uncomfortable siesta started up the dry arroyo into the foothills.

  “Three kilometres to go,” said Toby. “Well, it’s easier to judge distance here than on that damned plain. Let’s each form our own judgment independently and then strike an average.”

  “What are we to look for?”

  “A low cliff on the right of the streambed. It might be inconspicuous among all these rocks, though my friend seemed to think it wasn’t.”

  They travelled steadily up the arroyo, their string of horses winding from side to side along the pebbly channel of the floods. It was impossible to pace the three kilometres; they could only be estimated by taking a series of fixed points and adding up the distances from one to another.

  Irma spoke first:—

  “I should say we are about there.”

  “Would you? I should put it a little farther. But I can’t think in kilometres. I have to reckon it as a bit under two miles, and that’s vague.”
r />   “There’s no cliff yet anyway,” she said. “Let’s go on.”

  They trudged on until Toby also agreed that three kilometres had been passed. The bottom of the valley was ribbed by ledges of rock running across the tumble of boulders and pebbles, but there was nothing resembling a cliff.

  “What other marks have you?” Irma asked.

  “Two spurs crossing each other on the skyline. Standing fourteen paces above the cliff you find three stones in line with the V. That’s where the gold is.”

  “There’s your V,” she said, pointing to a marked dip higher up the valley. “But we’ll never find the stones without the cliff.”

  She searched the southern slope of the valley with her eyes. It was sown with single rocks and clumps of rocks, but none of them stood out more than the rest.

  “Is your friend a good judge of distance?” she asked.

  “He should be.”

  “What was he? A fat financier?”

  “Far from it. A man who has lived and fought all over these hills.”

  “He sounds a funny kind of conservative,” said Irma suspiciously.

  “He is a funny kind of conservative. So am I. Let’s go on another mile or so.”

  The valley narrowed until it became a shallow gorge with cliffs more or less of the size described by Manuel, but on both sides. There were no landmarks visible. They had already passed the first of the descending shoulders, and there was no similar formation ahead. At this point the canyon in no way fitted Manuel’s account of it. There was even a little vegetation and a trickle of water seeping over the bare ribs of rock. They halted to let their horses drink and to fill a half-empty skin.

  They returned down the valley to Irma’s three-kilometre point. After unloading their animals and establishing a barren camp on the fine gravel of the arroyo bottom, they separated to explore the slope, Irma working westwards and Toby eastwards. He counted the fourteen paces from a score of likely points, but, wherever he stood, the cleft on the skyline was always aligned with some near or distant group of stones. The only solution was to dig behind them all with a spade—a slow task and, he felt, a hopeless, for Manuel could not have been mistaken about the cliff.

  He had never doubted that he would at once find the gold, and under the influence of that convinced optimism, the difficulties of its sale and transport had seemed easy to surmount. Now that the first attempt had failed, all the possible troubles ahead were greatly exaggerated. Irma herself added to his uneasiness. In the rapidly falling twilight he could just see her tall figure climbing, halting, stooping on the distant slopes. Loyalty, determination—how splendidly she played for whatever side she chose! She was the ideal type of Teutonic womanhood, or manhood, for that matter, yet accepting the ideals of a mass hysteria and serving a creed made up of outworn catchwords. It was a futile world. The few that had escaped the pox of money-making hurled themselves instead into orgies of violence for the sake of imaginary crusades. Manuel was a thousand times right. It was a period of history when men needed the monastery—and just those men who gave not a rap for any formal religion.

  He collected a load of dead brush and roots from the upper slopes of the valley and built a fire. It flamed too fiercely for cooking, so he laid out a cold meal and called to Irma. She strode silently out of the darkness and glided down on to slender haunches with the grace of a crouching greyhound.

  “It’s cold,” she said, holding out her arms to the blaze. “I didn’t realise it. What have we to eat, Toby?”

  “Hard-boiled eggs, tinned tongue, a cold roast kid and aguacate salad. No more sherry. But here’s a little skin of Mexican red. We’d better drink it. I’m going to fill it with doubloons to-morrow.”

  “You still think the gold exists?”

  “I know it exists.”

  “We’re in the wrong valley, then.”

  “Perhaps. We’ll ride down at dawn and explore up and down the railway for another valley.”

  “My horses!” she cried. “Poor darlings, I’d forgotten all about them!”

  She draped a serape round her and ran her hands over the horses, looking for thorns and cactus spines. That done, she fed them and returned to the fire.

  “How’s the grain holding out?” he asked.

  “Enough for to-morrow. Then we must go to Durango and buy more.”

  Over supper they discussed back and forth the possible errors in their calculations. Toby would not admit that Manuel’s directions were inexact or that his memory of them could be at fault. He was convinced that their failure was due to a lack of intelligence in himself, and that a rapid ride in the morning would so clear up the geography of the foothills that he could see where he had gone wrong. Meanwhile his thoughts insisted on returning again and again to Irma. He was surprised that the search for the gold did not exclude all other interests—three hundred thousand pesos were enough to send a man mad with disappointment if he could not find them, and with joy if he could. Yet about that treasure he was perfectly calm, while about Irma and her confounded National Socialism he was in a rage. It was evident that her thoughts too were dominated by her companion.

  “Toby,” she said suddenly, “why don’t you come and spend a few months in Germany? I’ll introduce you to everyone who matters. Work with us a little while.”

  He shook his head.

  “My dear, it’s no good. I should be arrested after a week—in bed with a Jewess, reading Das Kapital and listening to Moscow on the radio.”

  “I don’t like to think of you in bed with a Jewess, Toby,” she said gravely.

  “Any alternative to offer?” he laughed.

  “Don’t be unpleasant! You know what I mean. You’re an Aryan, Toby!”

  “Am I? I don’t know.”

  “Oh, be serious!” she ordered sharply. “I’ll make you understand—would you like to think of me in bed with a Jew?”

  “Your mind, Irma, seems to be running on beds.”

  “Don’t be so damned clever! Think of it—a fat, revolting, greasy Jew?”

  “But I can’t see that he’s any more revolting than a fat Baltic businessman with four rolls of lard at the back of his neck, pig eyes and a shaven head with warts on it. Or that a young and spiritual Jew is a less lovely sight than that beautiful boy who sang the Horst Wessel song at the Sportverein. I say, hadn’t we better lay off politics?”

  “I can’t. I do want you to understand us.”

  “I’m afraid I do.”

  “You don’t! You’re a bigoted liberal. You won’t try to see the new conception of the state.”

  “But I do see it, Irma. I sympathise with your authoritarian state. I admire your attempt to organise a sort of feudal system in industry and agriculture. I’ve no objection to worshipping Wotan and Thor if you want me to. And so long as you educate the bodies and minds of your boys—and you do!—I see nothing wrong in conscripting them for service in the army and on the land. But I simply do not believe in the rights of one language over another.”

  “Of a language?” Irma asked. “We don’t say that.”

  “Of a nation, if you like. The only definition of a nation that I know is a bunch of human beings speaking one language, descended from hundreds of other bunches speaking hundreds of other languages. A temporary unit that has no rights at all compared to the rights of the whole of Europe.”

  “But that’s childish!”

  “Then preach to me as a child!”

  “I will. You say you love Europe. Which do you think is the better guarantee of peace—the present mess of little nations or a strong German state stretching right across the heart of Europe? The Holy Roman Empire come to life again!”

  “I’ll grant you your Holy Roman Empire. But—forgive me, dear—I don’t think your Führer is a calm enough man to create it. A Bismarck or a Metternich, yes!”

  “Snobbery!”
exclaimed Irma, jumping to her feet. “You are like the rest. You cannot believe that a great leader can spring from any but the class of gentlemen.”

  “Nonsense! I think that the saviour of Europe to-day must come from the proletariat. But I do demand that he should have the instincts of a gentleman.”

  “He has! A pure and splendid soul! You can’t compare him to your Bismarcks and Metternichs, drunkards and snobs and liars. National Socialism is a great creed, Toby. It’s the answer of the plain man to Bolshevism. And it’s the fighting faith of half Europe. Even in England you have your fascists!”

  “A safety valve,” answered Toby contemptuously. “If the flag wavers didn’t have that to amuse them, they’d be going to prison for all sorts of nasty sexual offences.”

  “You beast!”

  He stood up, quivering with anger, and then controlled himself.

  “Hardly that. Uncharitable, perhaps.”

  “Beast! Beast!”

  Exasperated by his apparent calm, she leapt forward and struck him on the mouth. Her eyes were narrow and insanely steady; her lips set in an ascetic line. She was helplessly out of hand, but there was nothing to be done. He shot a furious glance at the angle of her jaw. She was a healthy young woman and a right hook to it would leave her subdued and comparatively unhurt when she came round again. But it was unthinkable. One couldn’t strike the cheek one had so loved at twenty-two.

  “You! You’re a liar! You’re rotten, Toby! Your mind’s like a dirty Jew-boy’s, not a man’s. You’re a coward! Scream—let’s see you!”

  She picked up a flaming branch of mesquite from the fire and flicked it past his face, making him wince and blink. She was safe as a tamer putting the fear of man into his beasts. He knew that if he stepped back, she would follow him exulting in her power to hurt; he knew that if he leapt at her she would not hesitate to press the flame against his skin. The slender arm, thrust out from the folds of the serape and red in the light of the branch, fascinated him. He watched it for a split second until it inspired him with a purely instinctive action of defence. With the lunge of a fencer he shot out his left hand beneath the flame and caught her wrist, forcing it upwards. She dropped her weapon, crying out with pain and surprise. He caught her other wrist and crushed out against her the smouldering fire in the sleeve and shoulder of his shirt. Her face touched his and he kissed her. He knew it was unforgivable folly—a sudden impulse to assert his strength against hers, to emphasise her inferiority if she chose to resort to physical force. It was deliberately insulting; a mere gesture that he had no intention of following up. But the sudden blaze of anger in her eyes, so infinitely more human than the cold savagery with which she had held his gaze a moment since, aroused his own cruelty. He strained to kiss her again, but she, no longer off her guard, wrenched away her head.