A strong smell of cooking, humanity and disinfectant met them, and as they turned along the upstairs corridor, he was aware that from behind every door they passed there was a sound of voices.
“It would be the same if it were a barracks still,” David tried to tell himself. But nothing really reconciled him to the fact that behind each of those doors several individuals or families were living out their separate lives.
At the end of the passage Anya paused before the last door and, with an air of considerate politeness strange in this harsh, overcrowded place, she knocked gently. A woman’s voice called out something and Anya entered, gesturing to David to follow her.
Firmly suppressing a sense of distaste, he followed her into the large, high room and looked around him. More than half of it was partitioned off with faded curtains strung on a line and a couple of high cupboards. In the open space remaining there was a small stove, and on this a woman—presumably the one who had called out—was cooking something which smelled surprisingly good.
She murmured some greeting to David which was evidently meant to be friendly, and he said, “Gruss Gott,” in return, for he knew no Polish, and “How do you do?” seemed hardly to fit the case.
Anya paused only to ask an anxious question and receive a resigned shrug in return. Then, crossing to the curtained-off space, she lifted aside one of the curtains and invited David to enter what appeared to be the middle one of three cubicles.
Grimly determined to go through with the adventure, David stepped inside the confined space, and found himself looking down upon a narrow bed, where lay the wreck of one of the handsomest men he had ever seen.
The sick man might have been anything from fifty to sixty-five, but, taking into account the privations he had suffered, fifty, David decided, was probably nearer the mark. Fine, silvery hair covered the well-shaped skull, and the bone structure of the face was almost beautiful. The hollow dark eyes now turned on David were large, brilliant and intelligent, and the hands which moved a little aimlessly on the poor coverlet were the hands of a gentleman.
As Anya bent over him to whisper a few words in French, David was not surprised to hear her father reply in a well-pitched, cultivated voice. Then, turning to David, he said politely,
“It was very kind of you to come, Monsieur. But my daughter is over-anxious. Just a slight indisposition. My heart—” One of the beautiful, restless hands went suddenly to his heart, and a slight gasp cut short the rest of the sentence.
“I assure you,” replied David, finding he was an anxious to explain himself as if he had forced his way into someone’s house, “that I have no wish to intrude on your—your privacy, Monsieur. But if there is anything I can do which a friend might be allowed to do, please let me be of assistance.”
“Thank you. There is nothing.”
“Oh, Father, that isn’t true! You should have a doctor and—”
“I will not have any German put his hands on me,” replied the sick man, and closed his eyes as though the last word had been said.
At this Anya looked in such desperate appeal at David that he found himself sitting down by the bed and saying firmly,
“You must pardon me, Monsieur, if I seem to exceed the rights of a stranger, but your daughter has been good enough to call on me as a friend. And no friend could agree to go away and leave you like this, as Mademoiselle has said, you must have a doctor—”
“I will not have a German touch me,” replied the man on the bed, as though he were stating this view for the first time. Biting his lip, David told himself this was, presumably, what was meant by Slav pride and obstinacy. But David also could be obstinate, and sudden inspiration had come to him. With a fine disregard for any question of medical etiquette, he said firmly,
“I have just remembered that a friend of mine—the junior assistant of my uncle who was a well-known doctor—should be in Munich on holiday just now. If I brought him here tomorrow—” Heaven alone knew how he was to get hold of Robin Drummond and make him come!—“would you be willing to see him? An English doctor?”
There was a slight pause. Then a curious flicker, almost of amusement, passed over the sick man’s face.
“If you went to so much trouble. Monsieur,” he said faintly, “it would be ungrateful of me to refuse to see your friend.”
“Then I’ll bring him if it is humanly possible,” David declared. And the glowing look of gratitude and admiration which Anya turned upon him suddenly seemed a completely adequate reward for any trouble he might be taking upon himself.
“If there is anything else—”
“Nothing else, Monsieur, thank you. I am only ashamed that, in our present circumstances, we can show you no hospitality in return for your kindness.”
He might have been a nobleman apologizing for the temporary absence of his suite, and, for the first time in years, David felt almost boyishly embarrassed.
“Please don’t worry. I am only too happy to help.”
“I see you are.” The brilliant dark eyes rested on David for a moment, once more with a hint of amused indulgence. “The British are a singular race. They have one say this, not because you are an Englishman, but because it is a bitter truth learned over many years. They are the only people who, almost without exception, have a sense of responsibility towards those less fortunate than themselves.”
Half put out but wholly pleased, David hardly knew what to say. Then the other man glanced at Anya and spoke with kindly authority.
“Will you leave us, my dear? I want to speak to our friend alone for a few moments.”
Without demur—though reluctantly, David thought—she raised the curtain and went out into the other part of the room. There was silence than, but David did not attempt to hurry the sick man. He had the curious conviction which comes to us all at times that something tremendously significant was about to happen. Then the other man spoke slowly and very quietly.
“Monsieur, it is not necessary to pretend, now that Anya has gone. I know—and possibly you know too—that I am dying. It may be tomorrow, next week, perhaps even tonight. No—” as David made a move to interrupt—“do not seek to console or reassure me. No one who has looked on life in such bitter terms as I need fear the peace and the simplicity of death. For me it is the ultimate solution. But for Anya it will be the beginning of fresh and grievous problems.”
David moved slightly, and then, prompted by a sympathy deeper than anything he had ever known before in his well-ordered life, he said, also speaking quietly,
“If you will trust me, I promise to do whatever I can for her.”
The other man did not reply at once, and when he finally spoke it was to himself rather than to David.
“Perhaps, after all,” he said, slowly and a little wonderingly, “God does remember even us.”
“If I can help your daughter—” David began, and then he stopped, for suddenly the dreary cubicle was instinct with approaching drama, and in some strange way he knew what was coming, even before the dying man leaned forward and said earnestly,
“Anya is not my daughter, Monsieur. That is why in your coming one dares to see the hand of God. Anya was the daughter of an Englishman.”
CHAPTER TWO
For perhaps half a minute David was silent, almost stunned by the impact of the discovery he had just made. With some detached part of his mind, be heard the sound of a saucepan being moved on the stove beyond the curtain, and the quiet voices of Anya and the woman talking. Outside in the quadrangle there were shouts from the children playing there.
Then at last he spoke, and all he could think of asking was, “Does she herself know?”
The other man shook his head.
“Her father died before she was born. I married her mother—” He gasped for breath and evidently found it almost impossible to go on.
But David had to know more, and almost impatiently he demanded,
“What is her real name, then? Is there anything to show who she really is?”
“Tomorrow—“the side man gestured helplessly—“when you come—with your friend—”
It was obvious that any more talk was out of the question, and, with the greatest reluctance, David was compelled to abandon further questioning. He got up. And then, on an impulse for which he was ever afterwards thankful, he bent over the man and took his hand.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I will see she is all right.”
A faint, flickering smile and the lightest pressure of his hand were the only signs of reply. And then David went out into the other part of the room, where Anya quickly came to him and accompanied him out into the corridor once more,
“What do you think of him, Herr David?” she asked eagerly, and he found himself half charmed, half irritated by this intimate form of address.
“I am not a doctor, my dear,” he hedged.
“But you could see something for yourself,” she insisted.
“Well, you don’t need me to tell you he is very ill. I shall be glad when my friend has seen him. But—” he groped for words in which to put what he wanted to say—“possibly extra nourishment—he must need things. And you too. You must let me give you some money—”
But he saw her lashes come down, shadowing her eyes, and she seemed in some way to withdraw from him.
“I did not ask you for money, mein Herr.”
“No, I know that.” He wished now that she would call him “Herr David” again. “But one friend is always allowed to help out another friend on a special occasion.”
“And we—” the lashes swept up again—“are friends?”
“Certainly.” He was emphatic about that, since it seemed the best way of making her accept the money.
“Then, in that case—” she smiled shyly at him—“I thank you very much.”
Feeling slightly self-conscious, he took out his notecase, abstracted three twenty-mark notes and put them into her hand.
“That is a lot of money,” she said gravely.
“No, not really. Take it, child. And you’d better come and spend some of it now, if we can find a food shop open.”
“Oh, there is a shop open, quite near. A good shop,” she added, with a dash of such excited colour in her cheeks that he felt horribly sure she had been hungry most of the day.
“Come along then,” he said rather curtly because he was moved. And, after going back into the room to say a word to the woman, she very willingly accompanied him downstairs and out into the open air once more.
Quite a crowd of children were now gathered round the car, and two or three men were also regarding it with not very friendly eyes. All scattered at the sight of David emerging from the building, and although he gave a brief smile round, only one or two of the children smiled in return.
With Anya once more beside him, he drove slowly out of the wretched quadrangle, pausing again at the gate while she addressed a few more words to the man in uniform. Then, as they continued on, out into what David felt was the free world, she said,
“Tomorrow, when you come with your friend, you must tell the man at the gate that you want to speak to me.”
“Then you must tell me your other name.” David smiled. She looked surprised.
“Anya is sufficient. Everyone calls me Anya.”
“But I don’t think I shall call you Anya to the man at the gate,” he said, still smiling, but with a touch of obstinacy. “It’s rather lacking in respect.”
“To him?” She looked even more surprised.
“No, my dear. To you.”
“To me?” She stared at him and coloured slowly, and he saw that to be considered worthy of respect gave her the most delicious and unfamiliar sensation.
“My name is Anya Beranova,” she said, and instinctively she drew herself up slightly and spoke with a sort of youthful dignity which he found touching. “But,” she added naively, “you had better say the whole name, because he won’t know me as anything but Anya.”
“I will say the whole name,” he promised gravely. “And I shall do my best to bring my friend tomorrow afternoon. Is this your shop?’ And he stopped the car before a brightly lighted delicatessen store which obviously knew nothing about a forty-eight-hour week.
“Yes. This is the place.” She smiled at him. And then, as he leaned across to open the car door, she stammered. “I don’t know what to say, mein Herr—how to thank you—there are no words—”
“That’s all right.” He smiled and held out his hand to her. “Don’t thank me until I have really done something. The important thing is to get a doctor to your father.”
She did not answer that. For a moment she looked at his hand as though doubtful what he intended her to do with it. Then, to his profound embarrassment, she lifted it gently in her thin fingers and kissed it.
“Here, you mustn’t do that!” He sounded almost annoyed because he was so shocked.
“But I like to do it,” she said. Then she gave him that quick, fugitive smile and, slipping out of the car, she ran across the pavement and into the shop, without a backward glance.
David drove slowly back to his hotel, where he was astonished to find that, so little time had his dramatic experience really taken, the rest of his party were still lingering over dinner.
In their various ways they all looked slightly curious when he joined them. But only Bertram questioned him, and that lazily.
“What took you out again, so soon after we had all come in?” he enquired. “The desk-clerk said a Fraulein had come and fetched you away, which sounded intriguingly like a cut between a nursery game and the beginning of a mystery story.”
“I suppose it was something like a mystery story,” David conceded, and he picked up the menu and studied it, so that he need not look at anyone in particular.
“David, what do you mean?” His aunt sounded half amused, half apprehensive. “Who was the Fraulein?”
“Anya. She asked me to go and see her father. He’s very ill.”
The statement was made in a deliberately matter-of-fact tone. But nothing could take away from its incongruity—or its unwelcome quality so far as most of his hearers were concerned.
Again it was left to Bertram to ask carelessly of his cousin,
“Anya? Who is she?”
“The D.P. David spoke to the other day,” Lady Ranmere said, before her nephew could reply for himself. “But why on earth should she come to you, David?”
“There was no one else,” he replied briefly.
“But there must have been,” objected Mrs. Preston. “There are camp officials, surely? And what about the other people in the camp? She must know some of them well. Whereas you are a stranger.”
Her tone implied that he should also remain one.
“Her father seems to have a rooted objection to the German officials. And as for the other people in the camp, it’s hard to describe the isolation and indifference which utter misery breeds,” David said, out of the depths of his new and painful knowledge. “Anyway, you must just take it from me that there was no one else to whom she could appeal.”
“So you went with her to the camp?” That was Celia, speaking with her usual cool self-possession, which for once faintly irritated him, instead of pleasing him.
“Where a dying father promptly consigned his daughter to your care,” suggested Bertram flippantly.
David regarded his cousin a little grimly,
“As a matter of fact, that was roughly what happened. But it was not specially amusing.”
“Good Lord, was he really dying?” Bertram had the grace to look slightly abashed—a rare thing with him.
“I think so, yes. Though I’m going to try to get Robin Drummond to come and have a look at him He should be in Munich just now.”
“Yes, he should,” Lady Ranmere agreed. “But—but did you mean anything when you agreed with the second part of Bertram’s nonsense?” She looked definitely apprehensive now. “I mean—you couldn’t have a young girl consigned to your care. You aren�
��t old enough to be a young girl’s guardian, for one thing.”
“Nothing so specific as guardianship was mentioned, Aunt Mary.” David smiled slightly. “I merely promised to do what I could to help her.”
At this there was silence. Anything but a satisfied silence, David felt. But he affected not to notice this and addressed himself to ordering something to eat, from the waiter who stood at his elbow. Then, turning back, he addressed his aunt more directly than the others.
“I know it’s an odd situation, and certainly not one of my choosing. But occasionally one can’t choose. Just as you wouldn’t refuse to help a child whose parent had been knocked down in the street, would you?”
“No, of course not. But—”
“This girl isn’t a child, is she?” enquired Celia mildly.
“About eighteen or nineteen, I suppose.”
“I see.”
“A most interesting age,” observed Bertram, apparently to himself.
“But, David—” Lady Ranmere’s strong, good-looking face was a study—“you seem to have become so personally involved. Surely there must be officials—very well, then, voluntary workers or something—who can look after the girl. It’s such an extraordinary idea that you, a casual British visitor, should make yourself in any way responsible for an unknown Russian girl.”
“That’s the odd part of the story, Aunt Mary. The mystery part, if you like. It seems—” he glanced thoughtfully round the table—“she is not a Russian girl, after all. At least, only on her mother’s side. Her father was an Englishman.”
“An Englishman—”
Everyone exclaimed in chorus, but it was Teresa Preston’s voice, pitched on a high, excited note, which dominated them all. And it was she who eagerly added, “What Englishman? What was his name?”
“I don’t know, I’m afraid,” David admitted. And briefly he described the scene in which he had been told so much, and yet so tantalizingly little.
Love Is My Reason Page 3
