This Is the End — Part 08

* * * * * Next morning a great noise, centring in the bathroom, overflowed through the inn.

It was the noise of Kew singing joyful extracts from _Peer Gynt_.

Do you remember the beginning of the end of the Hall of the Mountain King?

It goes: "Bomp--chink....

Bomp--chink....

Tootle--tootle--tootle--tootle--tootle--tootle-tee....

Bomp-chink, ..."

etc. , etc. The way in which Kew rendered this passage, notoriously a difficult one for a solo voice, would have conveyed to any one who knew him that he had solved both his problems.

Anonyma knocked on the bathroom door, and said, "Cousin Gustus's headache is still bad."

Kew therefore broke into Anitra's Dance, which is more subdued.

Before breakfast he and Mr. Russell and the Hound walked to the downs.

The motor tour seemed to have come to a standstill.

Cousin Gustus's headache could be felt all over the house.

The moment Mr. Russell and Kew were out of earshot of the inn, Kew made such a violent resolve to speak that he nearly broke a tooth.

"Russ," he said, "I want to get off my chest for your benefit something that has been worrying me awfully."

Mr. Russell made no answer.

He had got out of the habit of answering.

"It's about Jay," continued Kew.

"I must break to you first that Jay's 'house on the sea-front,' with all its accessories--gulls, ghosts, turrets, aeroplanes, and Friends--is one large and elaborate lie.

She and I are very much alike.

The only difference between us used to be her skirt, and now she has gone a good way towards discarding that.

She is nowhere near the sea.

She is in London.

Now you, Russ, are what she and I used to call an 'Older and Wiser--'" Mr. Russell jumped violently, but uttered nothing except a little curse to his dog, which was almost under his feet.

"--And you are about the only person I could trust, in my absence, to get Jay out of an uncommonly silly position.

I can't bear her present pose.

It must stop at once, and if I had time I would stop it myself.

I have unfortunately sworn not to give her away to the Family, so I come to you.

She is a 'bus-conductor."

Mr. Russell refrained from jumping.

I believe he had expected it.

But he said, "It would be too funny."

Kew looked at him nervously, fearing for a moment lest Mrs. Russell's sense of humour had proved infectious.

Mr. Russell was thinking how funny it would be if the finger of desirable coincidence had touched his life.

How funny if a nice piece of six-shilling fiction should have taken upon itself to make of him its hero.

Too funny to be true.

But you, I hope, will remember that the coincidence was not so funny as he thought, since Jay had beckoned to it with her eyes open.

"Now, I have a prejudice against 'bus-conductors," said Kew.

"Why?"

asked Mr. Russell rather indignantly.

"I can't explain it.

If I could, it wouldn't be a prejudice, it would be an opinion.

But--well--just think....

The trousered 'bus-conductors probably ask her to walk out with them in Victoria Park on Sundays."

"I see your point," said Mr. Russell.

"You are about double as old as she is--if I may say so--and you are not one of the Family, two great advantages.

You know, Jay has suffered from not meeting enough Older and Wiser people.

She has had to worry out things too much by herself; she has never been talked to by grown-ups whom she could respect.

Anonyma never talked with us, though she occasionally 'Had a Good Talk.'

She never played, but sometimes suggested 'Having a Good Game.'

It's different, somehow.

You, Older and Wiser without being too old or too wise, might impress Jay a lot, I think, because you don't say overmuch.

And I want you to tell her something of what I feel about it too."

"I never realised before that from your point of view there was any advantage in being Older and Wiser," said Mr. Russell.

"You don't mind my saying all this?"

said Kew.

It was an assumption rather than a question.

"Not at all.

But I don't understand exactly what you want me to do."

"To give up this idiotic motor tour," said Kew.

"And go back to London, and talk Jay out of her 'bus-ism.

I want her to leave it off, and let the Family discover her romantically enjoying some passable imitation of her Secret World.

I want the Family never to know of all that lay between.

I do want it all to come right.

I'm going off to-day, and I may not see her again.

And I know hardly any trustable person but you."

"Right," said Mr. Russell.

He thought: It's too funny to be true, but if it isn't true, I shall be surprised.

Kew enlarged to him on the details of his mission.

On the breakfast table, when they returned, they found a letter from Jay, evidently written for private circulation in the Family.

Dear Kew--I have just come in from a walk almost as exciting as it was beautiful.

We walked through our village, which clings to both sides of a crack-like harbour that might just contain a carefully navigated walnut-shell.

The village is grey and white, all its walls are whitewashed, all its roofs are slate with cushions of stone-crop clinging to them.

Sea-thistles grow outside its doors, seagulls are its only birds.

The slope on which it stands is so steep that the main road is on a level with the roofs on one side, and if you were absentminded, you might walk on to a roof and fall down a chimney before you became aware that you had strayed from the street.

But we were not absent-minded.

We sang Loud Songs all the way.

We ran across the grass after the shadows of the round clouds that bowled across the sky.

In single file we followed the dog Trelawney after the seagulls.

Everything was so clear that we could see the little rare island that keeps itself to itself on our horizon.

I don't know its name; they say it bears a town and a post-office and a parson, but I don't think this is true.

I

think that island is an intermittent dream of ours.

When you get beyond the village, the cliff leaves off indulging in coves and harbours and such frivolities, and decides to look upon itself seriously as a giant wall against a giant sea.

Only it occasionally defeats its own object, because it stands up so straight that the sea finds it easier to knock down.

On a point of cliff there was a Lorelei seagull standing, with its eye on Trelawney.

It had pale eyes, and a red drop on its beak.

And Trelawney, being a man-dog, did what the seagull meant him to do.

He ran for it, he ran too far, and fell over the edge.

Well, this is not a tragic incident, only an exciting one.

Trelawney fell on to a ledge about ten foot below the top of the cliff, and sat there in perfect safety, shrieking for help.

My Friend said: "This is a case of 'Bite my teeth and Go.'

" It is a saying in this family, dating from the Spartan childhood of my Friend, that everything is possible to one who bites his teeth and goes.

The less you like it, the harder you bite your teeth, and it certainly helps.

My Friend said: "If we never meet again, remember to catch and hang that seagull for wilful murder.

It would look rather nice stuffed in the hall."

The cliff overhangs rather just there, and when he got over the edge, not being a fly or used to walking upside down, he missed his footing.

We heard a yelp from Trelawney.

But the seagull's conscience is still free of murder, my Friend only fell on to Trelawney's ledge.

So it was all right, and we ate our hard-boiled eggs on the scene of the incident.

"I remember--" said Mr. Russell.

"That letter," said Anonyma, "ought to help us a bit."

She was quite bright, because Kew had conveyed to her the hope that the plot for the rescue of the Family was doing well.

Cousin Gustus also, with no traces of a headache except a faint smell of Eau-de-Cologne, had come down hopefully to breakfast.

"Obviously the North coast of Cornwall," said Mrs. Russell.

"The village might be Boscastle, and the island is surely Lundy....

Such an intensely funny name, Lundy, isn't it?

Ha-ha!

For some reason it amuses me more and more every time I hear it.

It reminds me of learning geography with the taste of ink and bitten pen in my mouth.

I used to catch my sister's eye--just as I'm catching yours now--and laugh ever so much, over Lundy.

I used to be a terror to my governesses."

"I'm very much afraid that I can't spare much more time for the motor tour," said Mr. Russell, and Anonyma was so anxious for the first signs of rescue that she actually let him speak.

"Business in London.

I dare say I could get you to Cornwall within the next few days, but some time this week I must get back to town."

"I'll come with you," said his wife.

"You can't shake me off so easily, my dear.

Ha-ha!"

"It's too rainy to start to-day," said Cousin Gustus.

"I have known people drowned by swollen rivers and such while trying to travel in just such a deluge as this.

We will start to-morrow."

"Wet or fine," added Anonyma.

"The fact remains," said Kew, "that I must leave you by the ten something.

I must leave you to sniff without my help, like bloodhounds, along the trail of the elusive Jay.

But I won't bid any one a fervent good-bye, because I daresay I shall be back again on leave for lack of anything else to do in three weeks' time, if we can't get across the Channel.

In that case I'll meet you one day next month--say at Land's End or the Firth of Forth.

Otherwise--say forty years hence in Heaven."

"It is very wrong to joke about Death," said Cousin Gustus.

"I once knew a man who died with just such a joke on his lips."

"I hope it was a better joke than that," said Kew.

"It can't be wrong to laugh at Death.

Death is such a silly, cynical thing that a little wholesome leg-pulling by an impartial observer ought to do it good."

Mr. Russell was heard asking his Hound in a low voice for the truth about Death and Immortality.

So Kew went away, and left the Family gazing at the rain.

Mrs. Russell was conducting a mysterious process known as writing up notes.

It was hardly possible, by the way, that Anonyma could have loved the possessor of a rival notebook.

It rained very earnestly.

There was no hole in the sky for hope to look through.

The puddles in the village street jumped into the air with the force of the rain.

You will, without difficulty, remember that it rained several times in the Spring of 1916. But this day was a most perfect example of its kind.

Cousin Gustus was both depressed and depressing.

I am afraid I have not given you a very flattering portrait of Cousin Gustus.

I ought to have told you that he was very well provided with human affections, and that he loved Kew better than any one else in the world.

I might say that the departure of Kew let loose Cousin Gustus's intense grievance against the Germans, except that I could hardly describe a grievance as let loose that had never been pent up.

Cousin Gustus was always angry with the Germans whatever they did, but the thing that made him more angry than ever was to read in his paper some report admitting courageous or gracious behaviour in a German.

"The partings and the troubles that these Germans have caused ought to hang like mill-stones round their necks for ever," said Cousin Gustus.

"Talk about Iron Crosses--Pish!

I should like to have a German here for ten minutes.

I should say to him: 'My Kew was a good boy, I would almost say a clever boy, doing well in his profession: no more thought than that dog has of being a soldier till War broke out.

Does that look as if we were prepared for War?'

I should say.

'Doesn't that show where the blame lies?'

What could he answer?"

Mr. Russell and his Hound were apparently listening, but they could offer no suggestions.

"Kew's going has upset me so that my headache has returned, and I cannot get any Aspirin here," continued Cousin Gustus.

"I know a man who was very much addicted to these neuralgic headaches, who committed suicide by throwing himself from the bathroom window, solely owing to neuralgia.

And the rain does nothing towards improving matters.

They say the German guns bring on the rain.

I tell you there is no limit to their guilt.

Look at this morning's paper: 'The enemy bombarded this section of our front with increasing intensity during the day....'

I ask you, IS THAT WAR?"

"Yes," said Mr. Russell absently.

"Nonsense," said Cousin Gustus.

"What we ought to do is to shoot every German we can catch.

Shooting's too good for them.

Hang them.

That would teach them.

Any Government but ours would have thought of it long ago.

Iron Crosses, indeed, Pish!"

Cousin Gustus finds the Iron Cross very useful for the filling up of crannies in his edifice of wrath.

Anonyma said: "When I think of those old fairy-like German songs, I feel as if I had lost a bit of my heart and shall never find it again.

That is what I regret most about this War.

It is bad art."

"Art, indeed," said Cousin Gustus.

"Why, every time they steal a picture they get an Iron Cross.

I know a man who saw a German wearing a perfect rosary of Iron Crosses; the fellow was boasting of having bayoneted more babies than any other man in the regiment.

Listen to this: 'The enemy attacked the outskirts of the village of What D'you Call'em, and engaged our troops in hand-to-hand fighting.'

Think of it, and we used to say they were a civilised race.

At the point of the bayonet, it says--isn't it atrocious?

'The enemy were finally repulsed at the point of the bay--' oh well, of course that may be different.

I don't pretend to be a military expert...."

"I hate the Germans," said Anonyma, "because they have spoilt my own idea of them.

I hate having a mistake brought home to me."

"I hate the Germans," began Mr. Russell, "because--" "I'm going for a walk," said Anonyma.

"I am sick of sitting here and hearing you two old fogies argue about the War.

If War is bad art, it is vulgar to refer to it."

I know exactly what Mr. Russell was going to say.

He had a vague culinary metaphor in his mind.

I hate the Germans because they are underdone, they are red meat.

Their vices and their virtues and their music, and their greed and their fairyism and their militarism, all seem to have been roasted in a hurry, and to contain, like red meat, the natural juices to an extent that seems to us excessive.

The reason why some of us dislike red meat is that it reminds us too much of what our food originally was.

As we ourselves, possibly, are rather overcooked by the fire of civilisation, this vulgar deficiency in our enemy is very apparent to us.

This is an elaborate, but not a pleasing analogy, and it was fortunate that Mr. Russell was interrupted.

Otherwise, I think he might have been trying to this day to explain it to an exasperated Cousin Gustus.

He spoke of it to his Hound, and the idea interested that animal very much.

Mr. Russell, unfortunately, had a cold, and was therefore unable on such a wet day to leave the house or Cousin Gustus.

But Anonyma went out in a mackintosh that gave her the "silhouette" of a Cossack, and a beautiful little tarpaulin sou'wester, and high boots, and a skirt short enough to give the boots every chance of advertisement.

The notebook was safe in a water-tight pocket.

She covered with great speed and enthusiasm the few miles to the sea.

She reached it at a point where the cliff dwindled into flatness, where the gentle tide rattled on pebbles instead of on sand, where the tall breakwaters contradicted the line of the shore.

The furthest breakwater had seaweed like hair waving on the water.

At intervals it would seem to be thrust up between two glassy waves, like a victim beckoning for deliverance from the grip of some monster.

And then the sea's lips would close on it again.

The sea was freckled by the rain, the waves were beaten into submission.

The tide was rather low, and not very far away a great company of porpoises bowed each other through the mazes of a slow quadrille.

There were a few rocks spotted like leopards, and on one of these a young brown seagull rested, and allowed itself occasionally to be washed gracefully away.

"Lazy Nature!"

said Anonyma reprovingly.

"To sketch such a scheme in a few careless lines."

For the whole world was rain-colour.

There was no horizon to the sea, the downs were blotted out, the wet shingle reflected its surroundings, the waves broke unmarked by foam or shadow.

There was nothing but the porpoises and the breakwaters and the rocks, and a little bald sand dune, sketched on the canvas of that pale day.

Anonyma perpetuated in her notebook her opinion of Nature as an artist.

On the whole, it was a flattering opinion.

Then she sat on the breakwater, and thought how fortunate she was to be able to think such interesting thoughts about what she saw.

How fortunate to enjoy thought and to cause thought!

How fortunate to feel oneself a member of the comforting fellowship of intelligence!

"It is much more delightful," Anonyma informed the sea, "to be intelligent than to be beautiful.

Why do we all try to make our outsides beautiful?

There is competition in beauty, but there is brotherhood in intelligence.

To be clever is to share a secret and a smile with all clever people."

A vision of the coast of the United Kingdom encircled by a ring of consciously clever Anonymas sitting on breakwaters, sharing each with all a secret and a smile, came vaguely to her.

She put all that she could of her soliloquy into her notebook.

And then she noticed the face of a man, with its eyes upon her, appearing stealthily over a breakwater.

The face wore the grin that some people wear when they are doing anything with great caution.

This gave it a very empty, bright expression, like the mask that represents comedy in a theatre decoration.

The face dropped down behind the breakwater, after meeting Anonyma's surprised eye for a second or two.

Anonyma kept her head.

First she thought it was the face of a bather, the path to whose clothes she was unwittingly barring.

Then she thought it was the face of a picnicker, resentful of her intrusion.

Then she thought it was the face of a German spy.

The first two of these three thoughts she rejected because the weather reduced their possibility to a minimum.

The third she instinctively adopted as a certainty.

The face at once became obviously German in her eyes.

It was broader about the chin than about the forehead, it was pink, the architecture of the nose was painfully un-English.

She scanned the sea for the periscope of a submarine.

Anonyma remembered that she had written in her notebook, a day or two before, an intimate description of the coast as seen from the Ring.

She also remembered distinctly seeing in the bar of the inn a notice warning her to the effect that walls--and probably breakwaters--have ears and eyes in these days, and that the German Government has a persistent wish to possess itself of private diaries and notebooks.

"I am having an adventure," said Mrs. Gustus.

"I must keep cool."

She got up from her breakwater, holding her notebook very tightly, and began to walk away.

When she looked back, she saw the top of the man's head moving behind the breakwater, in a parallel direction to her own course.

When he reached the point where the breakwater ended and denied him cover, he wavered for a moment, and then, with an expression of elaborate indifference, followed her.

"I must keep even cooler than this," thought Anonyma.

"I must try and catch the spy."

She walked across some waste land sown with memories of picnics, and reached the main road.

The man crossed the waste land behind her.

He tried in a futile way to look as if he were not doing so.

On the main road, Anonyma turned and waited for him.

It seemed useless in that empty landscape to sustain the pretence that they were unaware of each other.

"Did you wish to speak to me?"

she asked, as well as she could for the great lump of excitement that beat in her throat.

Before her eyes visions of headlines danced: "LADY NOVELIST'S PLUCKY CAPTURE OF A SPY."

The man became dark red as she spoke.

"Yes," he said.

"I wanted to ask you what you were writing in that notebook?"

Anonyma paused for a moment, as she decided what she ought to do.

Then she said in a hoarse voice: "I have detailed military information about this coast for twenty miles round in my notebook, with accurate reports as to the depth of the water.

If you come to my lodgings in D----, I can show you a map that I have made."

A tremor ran through the stranger.

"A map?"

he repeated.

"Yes, a map," said Anonyma; and then, as he did not move, she added on the spur of the moment, "Also a design for a new kind of bomb which I bought from a man in London."

"A bomb?"

he said.

Anonyma thought that he was evidently a foreigner, though his accent was English.

He seemed to find English rather difficult to understand.

"Why do you tell me all this?"

he asked finally.

"Because I recognise your face as that of a sp--I mean a fellow-worker in the great brotherhood of espionage," said Anonyma.

"Come on, then," said the man.

So they walked off together.

"Why did you take up this--calling?"

asked the man presently.

"Are you a German?"

"Well, more or less," said Anonyma.

"At least, I have never been a Christian.

I believe that one must take either War or Christianity seriously.

Hardly both."

It was a good opportunity for a monologue.

Obviously the stranger was not one who would resent a monopoly of the conversation.

"After all, men are only minor gods," said Anonyma, "and War is what gods were born for.

Germany knows that.

That's why, under the present circumstances, I'd rather take German money than English."

"Are we anywhere near D---- yet?"

Anonyma hoped that he still had no suspicions.

His voice was distinctly nervous.

To reassure him, she said, "Why did you take up espionage yourself?"

"Why, indeed?"

said the stranger in an ardent voice.

"Of course the pay was enormous.

Twenty thousand francs if I could get an exact chart of the South Coast."

"Why francs?"

asked Anonyma.

"Not francs.

I find these various currencies so confusing, don't you?

Of course I mean pfennigs."

"Twenty thousand pfennigs?"

said Anonyma.

"Look here, are you trying to be funny?"