The Third Hour

by Geoffrey Household

  “Export manager of Hanson & Crane,” Toby explained. “He couldn’t meet you to-night as he stayed late clearing things up in the office. He’s taking to-morrow off.”

  Mrs Bendrihem returned and settled by the fire as gently as a bird that had flown in out of the darkness.

  “Will you all have supper with me to-morrow night?” she asked.

  “To-morrow is Friday, mama,” Bendrihem reminded her.

  “That is why I ask them, Simon. They will be my guests.”

  She turned to Manuel. She had accepted him naturally as the leader. There was a subtle deference in her manner towards him, a spiritual deference. It was expressed in her tone of voice and the movements of her hands.

  “How many will you be?”

  “I don’t know,” Manuel answered, and looked at Toby.

  “Far too many, Mrs Bendrihem,” Toby answered. “The three whom you are putting up and their four children, Mr and Mrs Whitehead, Gregory Vassilieff, Countess von Reichensund, and perhaps a Mr Ottery.”

  “Certainly a Mr Ottery,” said Simon. “I shall invite Penelope.”

  “That is not many,” Mrs Bendrihem smiled. “When my husband was alive, God always blessed our house with strangers on the eve of the Sabbath.”

  “The Sabbath?” asked Toby, thinking she had mistaken the day. “Oh, of course!”

  Irma stood up, seeing that Toby and Vassilieff looked like settling down over their whisky and realising, as they did not, that their frail hostess would consider it her duty to sit with them.

  “I am so tired,” she said. “You will forgive me if I take them away so soon?”

  “Provided you bring them to me to-morrow, Irma.”

  Irma’s eyes suddenly filled with tears at the sweetness with which her name was spoken, at the natural manner with which the old lady accepted her son’s friends and assumed that she too had her part in the rare companionship between them all, justifying the use of the Christian name. It was impossible that Mrs Bendrihem could have adapted herself to it; the explanation must be that she had lived her whole life in that spirit of simplicity and generosity which they themselves hoped to attain.

  Irma bent and kissed the wrinkled cheeks. They were soft as thin and very ancient leather and held the fragrance of a perfume imagined rather than smelt, as if the skin itself remembered the care of a mother, the glory of youth among the roses of the Bosphorus, the daintiness of advancing age. Mrs Bendrihem raised her hand in a gesture that was half blessing, half caress, and stroked the golden head that was laid against her own.

  When they had taken their leave, Mrs Bendrihem said good-night. Manuel and Paolo joined Simon before the fire, savouring the last moment of comfort before sleep should bring down the evening to the level of any other.

  “She is a jewel, your mother,” said Paolo. “What she does not know of children! You should see how they have confidence in her.”

  “For her all the world is full of children,” answered Simon in Spanish.

  “For you too, I think,” said Manuel.

  “No. Or at least for me the world is full of very naughty children, while for her they are all good.”

  “You are lucky,” said Paolo. “You have no enemies. It is good always to have been rich.”

  “You think the Jews have no enemies, Paolo?” asked Manuel.

  “I am a fool! You must have patience with me, compañero. I was a communist,” he added, explaining his assumption that tolerance necessarily depended on the possession of wealth.

  “Of course,” Simon answered. “If one thinks for oneself but has little time for reading, there is nothing else one can be. Are you an atheist too, Paolo?”

  “Si, señor! And neither you nor Manuel will persuade me to think differently!”

  “It matters to us no more than to God,” laughed Simon. “And Señora Salvini—a Catholic?”

  “Poor thing! But she was brought up so, and she always thinks she knows better than I.”

  “You will not mind, either of you,” began Bendrihem hesitantly, “if my mother—well, you see, after sunset tomorrow it is our custom that the woman of the house may do what she likes.”

  “Only on Fridays? What luck you have, you, the Jews!”

  “He means that for seven days of the week she does what she likes,” said Manuel, “but on Fridays she has the right to do what she likes.”

  “That is it—from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday,” Simon agreed. “But she has more than a right. She is, as it were, the head of the house. And on that night she may address God on behalf of all who are in the house. My mother sets great store by her little ceremony—”

  “Hombre! Por Dios!” interrupted Paolo. “You don’t think Impe or I would offend her? We have our own ways, and, speaking for myself, I tell you frankly I do not like superstition. But if your mother wants to pray for me, what I say is—let her do it every day and not only Fridays. We have great reverence for your mother, Impe and I.”

  “Thank you. I will tell her.”

  “Save your breath, compañero! With your permission—you can’t tell her anything about us that she doesn’t know already.”

  “Bed!” ordered Manuel. “We shall have a long day tomorrow.”

  He held out his hand to Simon Bendrihem.

  “Good-night. And thank you. I have not known such peace since I was in my father’s house.”

  Bendrihem’s outer office was empty except for the line of desks placed end to end down the centre of the room, forming a long table at which sat the founders of the order. Manuel sat at the head, cheek on fist, looking down the narrow valley between the stern faces of his companions, its floor strewn with papers, ashtrays and outstretched arms. Toby was speaking passionately and colloquially. It was a synthesis of their faith and its objects which could serve as a basis for the preliminary discussions. Manuel allowed his thoughts to wander, though the words of the low, musical voice entered effortlessly into his memory.

  Now that an acceptable creed had been born out of all the creeds refused, it seemed to him that there had been a logical pattern in the violent and disconnected episodes of his life. He had died three times; at the death of his wife; at the destruction of the train guard; at the final renunciation of the treasure. Thrice an unknown Manuel Vargas had arisen, shrugging its shoulders at the new reincarnation which, at the time, seemed no more purposeful than the old.

  How many times had these his companions died, he wondered. Tobal—not at all. He and Bendrihem gave the impression of having started from traditional beginnings and left behind on them, upon their journey through life, lines of continuous tracks; the Englishman, admittedly, through some very rough country of his own choosing, the Jew over a more normal road. Some of the others were more likely to have gone through these shattering rebirths and to be feeling, as he, that they had not been objectless. The woman, especially. Well, women were always dying—those of them who were cursed with some power of introspection seemed to make a habit of it. Still, this one, this Irma, looked as if her sufferings had been genuine enough. La vida pícara, discordant, adventurous—she knew what it was. So did Vassilieff. Russian colonel to commission agent; there had been a death there, a very gallant death. Albert Whitehead too. Where had he picked up this grave and courteous manner? He was a clerk from the suburbs, of the class who ordinarily did less thinking for themselves than any other. There was something queer about his right hand, so he had possibly been caught in the war. Soldiering, however, did not usually produce that type—without some wound mortal to the temporary soul but not the flesh.

  Paolo and the man they called Mark Ottery puzzled him most, though Paolo he knew more thoroughly than anyone else in the room. But both of them were being deliberately pried loose from environments that suited them—for apparently Tobal wanted Mark Ottery as much as he himself had wanted Paolo. It was curious that the two men, tho
ugh they had hardly a language in common, had drawn together in instinctive defence against the powerful influence of the rest. They sat together at the far end of the line of desks, and had enjoyed, until the meeting got down to business, a ribald and barbarous conversation through the medium of pidgin-French. The man Ottery looked older than Tobal—one would put him at over forty. Yet his face was lit by an entirely youthful radiance that seemed out of character with the rest of him; it suggested that his rebirth had happened very recently and that it had been conscious and enjoyable. To judge by what Vassilieff had said, it had nothing at all to do with the abbey.

  But one couldn’t expect all the companions to be led into the order by the logical processes of their lives. Some of them, like these two, would be netted as arbitrarily as niggers by a missionary. That didn’t matter, so long as he and the rest realised that their responsibility for them was increased.

  “I think that about covers it,” Toby finished. “We intend to make a refuge, material and spiritual, for the noble of all classes. We help him to resist the lies of newspapers, of politicians and any and all creeds that impose on him ready-made thought; that pretend to limit him. We teach that he should not conform to the standards, fashions and catchwords of the mass and especially to the conception forced on the masses of Europe by the new countries: that it is the duty of a good citizen to make money. It is not the business of an aristocrat to accept standards; it is his business to make them.

  “I don’t think any of us would fail to recognise the noble—the man who is both honourable and independent. Everyone recognises him, from the Australian savage to the Wall Street financier. They may eat him, swindle him or fill him up with castor oil, but they generally don’t. They can’t bring themselves to do it. Honour is very catching.”

  “All the same,” said Mark Ottery after a short silence had fallen on the table, “you intend mass propaganda, Toby, just as any other Movement with a damned great M.”

  “No! We don’t! We want to concentrate on the individual and let the salt work its own way through the mass. As I see it—” He turned to the table at large with a gesture of apology. “You all asked me to say what I thought. I don’t expect you to agree. But as I see it, our abbey or abbeys will work like a king. The king doesn’t order or preach, but he can do the hell of a lot of good through example and the ideas that filter out from his court.”

  “Yes,” Vassilieff agreed. “We are not reformers. We exist. That is all.”

  “You have not said what you mean,” Manuel broke in. “We shall do more than exist. We shall not preach, but we shall act.”

  “Yes. Thank you. That is what I meant. But how shall we act?”

  “Persuasion. How else? Let us suppose that we are weary of a newspaper proprietor or an employer of labour or a politician. It seems to me that one of us—the most fitted to the case—would go to him and ask:—

  “‘Is it really true that you prefer money to honour?’

  “Well, they killed Socrates for asking questions like that. Good! But he made them think. Our man has probably never asked himself such a question in his life, has never seen clearly that there is such a question. We shall act more or less as the priest of his parish might, if he were courageous enough. But we shall have more influence than any priests, because we are not priests. The power of our emissary is this. He is the sort of man to whom this indecent bourgeois would pay a fat salary, with whom his wife would fall in love, whom his workmen would obey. Yet this emissary of ours has no possessions, wants none and is happy. It is bound to make the man think, even if he does not listen.”

  “And if he gets kicked out of the office?” asked Toby.

  “My good Tobal, have you ever been kicked out of an office?”

  “Nearly,” Toby laughed, looking at Gregory Vassilieff.

  “Perhaps nearly. But never quite. The noble compels respect. Of—if you like it better—fear of the unknown.”

  “But what,” asked Simon Bendrihem, “is your ultimate weapon if persuasion fails?”

  “Think, compañero! We are incorruptible, known to be disinterested. But our abbey is rich, hospitable and with influence. We have no temptation to lose our tempers, no need to be impatient. Nothing that we value can be taken from us, even by imprisonment. We should be very dangerous enemies—in a law court or in any public controversy.”

  Manuel watched his companions’ faces. They were very serious and contemplative. He was afraid lest he might have startled them by too brusque a declaration. Apparently he had not done so, but had opened to each one a new and severer aspect of his responsibilities.

  “We should have a short life in some countries,” said Irma. “But we are not afraid.”

  “I am,” said Manuel frankly. “So for the present we will leave them alone. There are not enough of us yet to make martyrdom worth while.”

  “The apostles did not say that.”

  “Pardon, compañera! How do you know they didn’t? At any rate they began their mission in the civilised parts of the Empire. Paul could get justice by claiming to be a Roman citizen. Would I get any from the dictators if I claimed to be a European?”

  “Yet Germany needs us most. And Russia.”

  “I don’t think so, Irma,” Toby replied. “Germany and Russia are attacking the sanctity of money, but have no liberty of thought. The western democracies have liberty of thought, but are poisoned by this greed for material possessions. We have as much to do in one as in the other. Let’s be practical. We could only work in Germany and Russia by underground activities and ultimately revolution. That can’t be done yet. I don’t say that it mightn’t be attempted later with the consent of all the order.”

  “I don’t know—” began Albert Whitehead, and received instant silence.

  “What I mean is this,” he went on. “One has to look facts in the face. It’s all a dream, I suppose—but if we’re going to aim at being a ruling class, we’ve got to be trusted. We can’t ever be mixed up in revolutions and suchlike. Suppose one of these dictator chaps was in a bad way and wanted to take a minister from the abbey on trial. Well, he could only do that if he were quite certain that our whole organisation was out of politics. Of course it could never happen in a big country, but it might happen in a small one.”

  “The grey Eminence of Ecuador!” Toby exclaimed. “You know, he’s right!”

  “He is right,” agreed Manuel. “We keep on forgetting the Church. The more nearly we model ourselves on the orders of friars, the wiser we shall be.”

  Manuel translated the essence of the discussion to Paolo, and then carried on in Spanish in order that he might feel free to enter the conversation. For a time Vassilieff, Ottery and Whitehead were dependent upon Toby for a rendering of what passed. The room became thick with smoke as the arguments went back and forth, and the image of the order grew more concrete in the mind of each companion, a common and identical core to which the accretions of his own individual thought could cling. When they adjourned for lunch the main rules and objects of the abbey were clear.

  “My God!” exclaimed Toby, pushing back his chair. “I envy the monks of the Church. They can all speak Latin!”

  “They have to learn it,” Manuel replied. “We too shall have to learn a common language. It had better be the language of the country where we put down the abbey.”

  “Which will it be?”

  “We’ll tackle that at lunch.”

  “I wonder whether we should make any more decisions without the rest of the companions,” said Toby. “What about Impe, Paolo? Doesn’t she want to be here?”

  “What would she do here, compañero? She said she would go to mass and wash the children’s clothes. She has confidence in Manuel.”

  “And Edith, Bert?”

  “She said she’d heard quite enough about it already. And as Mrs Bendrihem asked her over with Tommy for the day, she’s gone ther
e.”

  “They know what matters to them,” said Vassilieff. “So does Tina.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What we are doing. She sent me here. I’d never have taken your crazy letter seriously. She did. She will have a grrreat deal to say.”

  “She will come here soon?” asked Manuel.

  “No point in it till I’ve settled up my affairs in Bucharest. Then we will come together. Make her a full companion meanwhile.”

  “I wish you would,” said Irma. “I am doing my best to make this thing liveable for women, but I need help.”

  “But will she—?” began Manuel.

  “My God, man,” Vassilieff exclaimed, “if a husband tells you that his wife is fit to be a full companion of this order, you can take it she is!”

  Manuel joined in the ripple of laughter that ran round the room, and Tina Vassilieff was accepted in her absence.

  Bendrihem had ordered a cold lunch and a wine cup at the pub three doors up Ivy Lane from his office. While they ate, they discussed the future site of the abbey. Irma was for Switzerland, but was overruled on the grounds that their internationalism would be suspect if it lived cheek by jowl with official internationalism. Toby was for France, declaring that it was the most civilised nation west of China, that they had no Frenchmen amongst them and that they needed some. Except for Manuel, the rest were in favour of England; Paolo and Bendrihem for an industrial district, Vassilieff and Whitehead for a manor remotely placed in the West Country.

  “We go too fast,” said Manuel. “It is too soon to put ourselves down in an industrial district. We are too few. We should be swallowed up by all the work immediately outside our door. I have promised myself to work in that blackness”—he stabbed his hand to the east as if it held a weapon—“there, by the river. But I do not think the whole abbey should be there; nor that we should identify ourselves with England. It is a monastery. A monastery, remember! We must be isolated but within touch. I say that Spain is the place for us.”

  “Unsettled!” said Vassilieff.

  “Certainly!” Manuel answered. “A country of anarchists who love discipline and communists who loathe the state. Of course it is unsettled. We are an old nation. We have lost faith in everything except mankind. But we understand monasteries—in fact we have only just seen the last of them.”